Living in a post-communist country where rule of law is not well entrenched is one of the most enlightening and frustrating part of this assignment in Albania. You expect party politics to be prevalent at the national and local government level, but here it is applied to the extreme. After the elections, the winning candidate can clean house down to the lowest clerical worker and replace them with the party faithfuls. Besides creating a paralyzing fear for months before an election, the change in staff usually means a change in rules and all work-in-progress to aborted and restarted from the beginning. Fortunately, it seems with each election, the level of replacement does not go as deep, but the paralysis is still present. While we may not like the bloated bureaucracy in the States, it sure beats the buddy bureaucracy.

As the government and people begin to learn about rule of law instead of the rule of tribal favoritism, the missing piece of the equation is governance, that is, enforcement of the law. Albania wants to become part of the EU and will do almost anything to comply with EU demands. If there is a law that is not on the books, no problem, it will be passed within the week. Getting laws on the books is not the issue here, it is the enforcement of existing laws that causes the most consternation. The problem with governance seems to have its roots in three institutions: schools, police and judiciary.

In schools, the system requires the students to pass an end of year test. This pretty much means, in general, the students only study for the test and teachers only teach to the test. Knowing that the students must pass the test, some teachers offer an optional tutoring class (for a fee) that guarantees the students will pass the end-of-year test and some are so blatant to tell the students they will not cover the test material in the normal class sessions.

So what are the students really learning? For one, they are learning that money is the commodity you need to get by. Not a degree, you can buy that, not an education as employers only look for degrees. Knowledge and critical thinking are very highly overrated commodities as both can be avoided with cash. In this environment, money rules, or maybe, with enough money the rules don’t apply.

The police just do their jobs, only they charge for their services. A friend was in an automobile accident where he was not at fault. Lots of witnesses, so there was no negotiation on determining fault. The officer took his notes and told our friend the report would be available the next day. Early am the next day, the police officer arrived at our friend’s house. The report is completed but there was a $30 fine to be paid if our friend wanted to get a copy of the report. Our friend argued that he was not at fault, so there is no fine. At the end, he needed the report for insurance claims and paid the fine. No, there was no receipt for the fine…what are you thinking?

Finally, according to our attorney friend, judgments from the court are given to the attorney who can offer the most money. While the appeal process does overturn many decisions, few have the financial resources to pursue the full legal cycle. There are several sitting judges that have over half of their rulings eventually overturned, with no recourse to the judge. When rulings are based on fraudulent documents, once the lower court accepts the evidence as valid documents, it is difficult to prove the documents fraudulent. In this situation, the burden of proof shifts to the person contesting the validity of the document, again adding expense to the process.

The challenge is how do you break the cycle? The students learn money talks and they can buy degrees, the police and court rulings. The victim learns if they complain too much, the police can make it very difficult on them by harassment. In these situations, the court system offers no relief, as honest attorneys do not have a high win ratio.

A democratic civil society is a delicate thing and vigilance by the people is always needed to assure its survival. The consequence of not taking the time and effort to care is very high.