In an attempt to establish order in prisons, Justice Minister Besfort Lamallari ended up clashing not with the opposition, but with his own party's deputies, who cut him off in committee.
The cause of the debate was the creation of a new agency for the supervision of prisons and the probation service, equipped with monitoring, information and investigative powers. A structure that, according to the draft law, must see everything, hear everything and report everything. The only question was: whose is the one in charge?
Lamallari insisted that, since he holds political responsibility for prisons, he should also have the helm of appointing the agency's director. Simple logic: there is no responsibility without control.
"As political responsibility is required, there must also be effective functional control and mechanisms for exercising this control," he said in the internal affairs committee.
But the socialist deputies were not convinced. They decided that the appointment should not go through the minister's office, but should go up one floor, to Prime Minister Edi Rama, reminding Lamallari that in this political house, someone else holds the keys.
The chairman of the committee, Bledar Çuçi, explained it briefly: it makes no sense for the minister to propose, control and appoint himself.
“All national agencies in Albania have their heads appointed either by the Council of Ministers or by the prime minister,” Çuçi said.
For his part, Lamallari tried to defend the idea that modernizing the prison system requires real-time information and a clear chain of command, but his arguments were drowned out by the majority votes.
In the end, the agency passed, but not according to the minister’s wishes. For safety, the deputies also added filters for the protection of personal data, in case some unwanted ears were listening in too much.
