Area Handbook for Albania Part 13

The people's court system consists of the Supreme Court and courts at each of the territorial subdivisions. Other types of courts may be created by law. The Const.i.tution provides that the people's courts are independent of the administration. A law on the organization of the courts pa.s.sed in 1968, however, specified that the "people's courts will be guided in their activities by the policy of the Party. In carrying out their responsibilities, they must strongly rely on the working ma.s.ses and submit to their criticism and control."

Decisions are made collegially. In cases where the Supreme Court and district courts have original jurisdiction--that is, when a case is to be first heard by them--a.s.sistant judges partic.i.p.ate in the ruling, unless the case is such that the law specifically states otherwise.

People's courts at the village and city levels decide cases with the partic.i.p.ation of an a.s.sistant judge from the district court and two so-called social activists, who are actually local Party members. If a case is before the Supreme Court by appeal, three judges make the verdict; when a case is before a district court by appeal, a.s.sistant judges partic.i.p.ate.

Trials are generally open to the public. In order to facilitate the political and social education of the population, courts are held in places of employment, villages, and any other place that makes them more accessible to the people.

a.s.sistant judges from the district courts and several social activists make up the village and city courts. The social activists are elected for one-year terms by a people's meeting. This level of the court system has jurisdiction over minor social crimes and simple civil cases.

The district courts are composed of a chairman, judges, and a.s.sistant judges. The judges are elected for three-year terms by the general population, and the People's Council appoints the chairman from among the elected judges. The district courts have original jurisdiction in all penal and civil cases unless otherwise specified by law. They also hear appeals from lower court decisions.

Military courts, called military collegiums, are appointed by the Presidium of the People's a.s.sembly to operate at the district level.

They are composed of a military judge and several military a.s.sistant judges. These courts have original jurisdiction over crimes committed by military personnel.

The highest court is the Supreme Court. It has original jurisdiction in important cases that the chairman of the Supreme court takes over from the district courts. It also hears appeals from the rulings of all lower courts.

Supreme Court judges are elected for four-year terms by the People's a.s.sembly. The court consists of a chairman, deputy chairmen, and a.s.sistant judges, the exact number being determined by the Presidium of the People's a.s.sembly. The Supreme Court is broken down into collegiums to handle different types of cases, such as penal, civil, and military.

It also sits in a plenum in order to issue directives concerning legal practices, to hear appeals from decisions made by its collegium, and to study the operation of the court system in its entirety.

POLITICAL DYNAMICS

The Dictators.h.i.+p of the Proletariat

As officially defined by the Const.i.tution, the state is a form of dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat. The power of the state const.i.tutionally belongs to the workers and peasants, represented locally by the people's councils, which supposedly make up the political base of the state. In legislation and in official doc.u.ments dealing with elections, it has been stated that the people not only enjoy freedom of choice concerning candidates but also have the right to supervise the work of their elected representatives and the right of recall if they are dissatisfied. In practice, such people's democracy does not exist, and the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat--that is, the rule of the people over themselves--is a facade behind which the real dictators.h.i.+p of the Party elite operates.

The Const.i.tution provides for direct, secret vote to elect representatives to all governmental bodies, from the people's councils in villages to the highest organ of the state, the People's a.s.sembly.

The voters themselves do nothing on their part to be registered in the electoral lists. These lists are drawn up for every type of election by the people's councils and are supposed to include all citizens who reach age eighteen on or before the day of the elections.

The democratic character of these elections is allegedly guaranteed by the procedure or right for nominating candidates. This right legally belongs to the Party, the Democratic Front, trade unions, and social organizations and is exercised by the central organs of these organizations and their organs in the districts. Nominations, with Party approval, also are made at the general meetings of workers and employees in the enterprises and state farms, of soldiers in their detachments, and of peasants in their agricultural collectives or villages.

All meetings for the selection of candidates are held under the auspices of the Democratic Front, in whose name all the candidates are presented for election. The only legal requirement of a candidate is that he enjoy the right to election, that the organization which proposes him confirm its intention in writing, and that he accept his candidacy for that of the a.s.sembly was a "vivid expression of the socialist democ-him. In practice, all candidates are preselected, and the meetings simply confirm the Party choice.

Political power, according to official doc.u.ments, is thus vested in the broad ma.s.ses who, through various organizations to which they belong, choose the candidates to be elected to all state organs, including the people's courts. The candidate who receives one more vote than half the number of voters registered in the electoral zone is proclaimed the winner and becomes, in theory, the agent representing the sovereignty of the people.

The highest organ of state power, according to official dogma, is the People's a.s.sembly, composed of representatives elected by direct vote who exercise the sovereignty and will of the people. The aim of the People's a.s.sembly, this dogma alleges, is to carry out the main functions of directing and supervising the people's democratic state.

The a.s.sembly's sphere of action includes practically all the political, economic, social, and cultural fields through the pa.s.sage of laws.

"These laws," according to an official doc.u.ment published in 1964, "on their part determine the juridical form of the line pursued by the Albanian Workers' Party in building socialism in Albania." The same doc.u.ment that stated that the laws pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly were but the juridical form of Party policies declared that the concentration of all state power in the hands of the a.s.sembly was a "vivid expression of the socialist democracy of the state system of the People's Republic of Albania."

Another doc.u.ment, published in 1963, a.s.serted that economic power and political power were indivisible and that a combination of the two formed the state power. The representative nature of the socialist state, the doc.u.ment declared, was rooted in the socialist economic basis of the country, derived from the state owners.h.i.+p of the means of production and from the property of the cooperative and collective organizations, princ.i.p.ally the agricultural collectives. All mines and subsoil resources, waters, forests and pastures, industrial enterprises, the means of air, rail, and sea communications, post, telegraph, telephones, radio broadcasting stations, and banks had become the property of the people.

It is thus the contention of the regime that the creation of the socialist sector of the economy not only placed all economic levers in the hands of the people but also altered old relations in production, resulting in a planned organization of the economy. Economic planning, it is argued, makes possible the elimination of exploitation of man by man. Also, through the planned organization of the economy the people are guaranteed the right to work.

With a view to regulating relations in work, the regime pa.s.sed a series of legislative acts that were subsequently embodied in the Labor Code.

As a result of this legislation, it was a.s.serted, conflicts between a worker and an enterprise were no longer possible, for the enterprise was the property of the state and the state was of and for the worker.

Accordingly, both the worker and the enterprise strove to achieve the same results, namely, to increase production and improve the material and cultural conditions of all the workers. To a.s.sure their own welfare, the workers in turn had to a.s.sume certain obligations; they were duty bound to guard socialist property, which was the "sacred and inviolate basis of the people's democracy, the source of power of the homeland and of the welfare and culture of the workers."

The theoretical mechanism evolved for the exercise of power through freely elected representatives had no resemblance to the actual locus of power and the state inst.i.tutions created to wield this power. The source of political and economic power was neither the workers and peasants nor the organs presumably elected by them. A perfect example was the actual power and influence of the People's a.s.sembly, to which official doc.u.ments attributed the power to appoint all the higher state organs and on which all state organs were dependent. In actual practice, the People's a.s.sembly held only two sessions a year, each lasting about two days; the delegates heard reports made by Party and government officials, approved without debate all bills and appointments presented to them, and then adjourned. The Presidium of the People's a.s.sembly was also given wide const.i.tutional powers in the fields of legislation and control of the state apparatus, but in reality its main function was to promulgate draft laws submitted to it by the Council of Ministers.

The Albanian Workers' Party

National Organization

The real source of all power was the Party, whose all-powerful Politburo was the country's top policymaking body. But even this body, composed of eleven regular and five candidate members, was under the firm control of Party First Secretary Enver Hoxha, who has headed the Party since it was founded on November 8, 1941, and Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu, who emerged as the military strategist in the Communist-dominated Army of National Liberation during World War II.

Although Hoxha, as first secretary and as the only surviving member of the small group of Communists who founded the Party, was considered the leader and the foremost Albanian Marxist-Leninist, he and Shehu have shared almost equal power since 1949 (see ch. 2, Historical Setting).

The real base of their power has rested in the security and armed forces, and Hoxha and Shehu have divided this power. As minister of defense until 1953, Hoxha personally controlled the armed forces, and since then he has controlled them through Beqir Balluku, his lieutenant (see ch. 9, Internal and External Security).

Shehu, as minister of the interior from 1948 to 1954, personally controlled the security forces, composed of the Directorate of State Security (Drejtorija e Sigurimit te Shtet.i.t, commonly known as the Sigurimi), the People's Police, and the Frontier Guards. Since then he has controlled them through his brother-in-law Major General Kadri Hasbiu, who succeeded Shehu as minister of the interior in 1954 and who still held that position in 1970.

The top executive branches of the Politburo were the four-man Secretariat and the various directorates of the Central Committee. In 1970 the Secretariat was composed of Hoxha as first secretary and Ramiz Alia, Hysni Kapo, and Xhafer Spahiu as secretaries. Hoxha supervised the whole work of the Secretariat; the other three secretaries were responsible for general areas of operation. Alia was responsible for ideological affairs, Kapo for organizational matters, and Spahiu for the state administration.

Policy guidelines adopted by the Politburo were pa.s.sed by the Secretariat to the appropriate directorate, which elaborated and drafted them in final form for implementation by the respective Party and state organs. The directorates had direct connections with all implementing bodies. For instance, the Directorate of Agitation and Propaganda, known as Agitprop, issued directives not only to the Agitprop sections of the District Party Committees but also to all propaganda outlets in the government, ma.s.s organizations, and the armed and security forces.

The most important directorates were the: Directorate of Cadres and Organizations, headed by Hysni Kapo, the third ranking man in the Party hierarchy; Directorate of Agitation and Propaganda, headed by Ramiz Alia; Directorate of Education and Culture, headed by Nexhmije Hoxha, wife of the first secretary; Directorate of State Administrative Organs, headed by Llazi Stratoberdha; and Directorate of Ma.s.s Organizations, headed by Politburo member Adil Carcani.

When important policy issues were decided by the Politburo, special commissions were created in the Central Committee to draft implementing guidance for a specific decision. Thus, for instance, in the spring of 1968 the Politburo decided on a complete reorganization and reorientation of the country's educational system. A Central Commission on Education was immediately created in the Party Central Committee; the commission was headed by Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu and included some fifty experts in the ideological, academic, and military aspects of education.

After a year's work the commission completed its report and, in June 1969, submitted it to the Central Committee, which gave its formal stamp of approval. In December of the same year the government submitted a bill to the People's a.s.sembly for the reorganization of the educational system; in its preamble the bill said that it was based on the report of the previous June as approved by the Party Central Committee (see ch. 5, Social System).

The Central Committee was the next highest echelon in importance in the Party organization. In 1970 it was composed of sixty-one regular and thirty-six candidate members. It was to the Central Committee that the Politburo submitted its policy decisions for formal approval. As a rule, in recent years the Central Committee has approved Politburo reports and decisions with little, if any, debate. But there have been occasions when the Central Committee has been called upon to decide on issues of the utmost importance for the country. For example, in February 1948 the Central Committee was convened to discuss and decide the issue of a possible merger of Albania with Yugoslavia. Although the forces favoring such a merger were in the majority, the dissenting voices were sufficient to block the proposed merger. Another Central Committee meeting, held in September of the same year, purged the top Party group that had advocated the merger with Yugoslavia. A similar crucial issue arose in the fall of 1961 on the question of relations with the Soviet Union. The Central Committee approved the Politburo decision to break with Moscow and issued a declaration to that effect.

The Party's ideological principles, tasks, and organizational structure were delineated in the Party's statute, originally adopted by the First Party Congress in 1948 and amended several times since then. In it, control by the Party was detailed specifically, and the statute rather than the Const.i.tution was the fundamental law of the land. According to the statute, the highest leading organ of each organization was: the general meeting for the basic Party organizations; the conference for the Party organizations of districts and cities; and the congress for the entire Party.

The guiding principle of the ideological and organizational structure of the Party was the Leninist dictum known as democratic centralism. As described in the statute, this principle provided in theory that the leading organs of the Party were elected from bottom to top at general meetings, conferences, and congresses; these organs were obliged from time to time to give account of their activities before their Party organizations.

Strict Party discipline was to be maintained under any circ.u.mstances, the minority being subject to the majority; decisions were to be reached on the basis of so-called free discussions but, from the moment a decision was reached, unanimously or by a majority of votes, all Party members were obliged to execute it without question; and the decisions of the higher Party organs were binding on the lower organs. The statute also provided that collective leaders.h.i.+p was the highest principle of the leaders.h.i.+p of the Party and that the elected organs as well as the basic Party organizations examined and solved collectively all Party problems.

The Party statute considered the Party Congress as the highest Party organ. The congress, usually called every four years, heard, examined, and approved the reports of the Central Committee and of other central Party organs; reviewed and made changes in the Party program and statute; determined the Party's tactical line on major policy problems; and elected the Central Committee and the Central Control and Auditing Commission and fixed the number of members of these two bodies. In actual practice, however, the Party Congress merely heard and approved reports submitted by the Politburo.

According to the statute, the Central Committee, which should meet in plenum at least once every four months, performed such formal functions as electing both the Politburo for guiding the affairs of the Central Committee between sessions and the Secretariat for "guiding the day-to-day affairs of the Party, especially for organizing the control of the execution of decisions and for the selection of cadres." During the period between two congresses the Central Committee guided the activities of the Party; represented the Party in its relations.h.i.+ps with other parties, organizations, and inst.i.tutions; organized and guided different Party inst.i.tutions; named the editors of the Party's central press organs and granted permission for publication of the local Party press; distributed the cadres and the means of the Party and administered the central treasury; and guided and controlled the activities of the central organs of the people's democratic authority and social organizations by means of Party groups in them.

Regional Organization

Regionally, the highest Party organ is the Party Conference at district and city levels, which is supposed to meet once a year and is comparable to the Party Congress at the national level. In practice, the periodic Party Conference becomes a pro forma meeting held for the purpose of displaying unanimity of opinion. Between conferences, operations are conducted by Party committees, and real power is exercised by a bureau of each committee that usually consists of about eleven members, who must first be approved by the Party Central Committee in Tirana. Bureau members.h.i.+p includes two secretaries who are the leading Communist officials in the city or district and, by virtue of their positions, the most powerful individuals.

The princ.i.p.al functions of the district or city committees are to guide the activities of all Party organizations in the district or town so as to a.s.sure the precise application of the Party line; approve the establishment of basic Party organizations; maintain records on members and look after their ideological and political education; distribute within the district or city the Party cadres; and administer the Party finances. More importantly, the district or city committee guides and regulates the activities and work of the local governmental bodies and social organizations by means of Party groups within them.

The statute describes the basic Party organizations as the foundations of the Party because they serve to link the working ma.s.ses of the town and village with the Party. The basic Party organizations are established in factories and plants, agricultural enterprises, machine tractor stations, villages, units of the armed and security forces, state administration, schools, and other work centers where there were no less than three Party members. When deemed necessary and where there are less than three Party members, there can be created joint groups of the Party and of the Union of Albanian Working Youth. These groups are directed by a Party member chosen by the district or city committee.

The basic Party organizations are a.s.signed a mult.i.tude of duties and responsibilities. They must ensure that Party orders are fully implemented, the ma.s.ses are politically oriented, the Communists obtain the required ideological and political education, new members are accepted into the Party, the ma.s.ses are mobilized in production work, the activities of the ma.s.s organizations are checked and guided, and control is exercised over all economic sectors and over all local governmental bodies.

The statute provides that in the armed forces Party affairs are to be directed by the Political Directorate of the Ministry of People's Defense and in the Ministry of the Interior they are to be directed by appropriate political organs. Party organizations in the armed forces operate on the basis of special instructions issued by the Party's Central Committee. All chiefs of political branches in military units and installations must be Party members with no less than five years of members.h.i.+p. The political organs in the military units are required to maintain close contact with the local Party committees (see ch. 9, Internal and External Security).

The latest official figures for Party members.h.i.+p were given by Party First Secretary Hoxha in his report to the Fifth Party Congress in 1966.

He placed the total members.h.i.+p at 66,327, of which 3,314 were candidate members. Since the Fourth Party Congress in 1961 the members.h.i.+p had grown by 12,688. According to Hoxha, the social composition of the Party members.h.i.+p was as follows: workers, 32.9 percent; collective farmers, 25.8 percent; private farmers, 3.2 percent; state, Party, and ma.s.s organization officials and armed forces personnel, 37.2 percent; and students and housewives, 0.9 percent. Of the total Party members.h.i.+p, women comprised 12.5 percent. Hoxha also said that nearly 68 percent of all Communists lived in cities and only 32 percent in villages, despite the fact, he commented, that the rural population was three times as large as that of the cities.