The Court is not mounting a Coup. It is the Government playing with Power!

By Kristina Nano

Chairwoman, LRE - Rinisja | PhD Candidate in Leadership, James Madison University (JMU), USA

In every serious republic, a thin line separates the game of power from the order of justice.

Those who understand that line act as statesmen.

Those who bend it behave as power players.

The case of Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku’s suspension by the court, and the way Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted to it, has placed Albania before a question that touches the very alphabet of democracy:

When a court sets limits on the executive, are we witnessing a coup m, or, at long last, the functioning of the separation of powers?

The Prime Minister chose to portray this decision as an aggressive overreach, a kind of “invasion” of the executive’s field by the judiciary.

His language seeks to plant the idea that the government is under attack from another branch that is supposedly “doing politics” in its place.

Yet in constitutional doctrine, and in the best juridical and political thinking of the last two centuries, one truth stands clear:

When a court draws boundaries around government action, it is not staging a coup, it is fulfilling its mission as a checking power.

Coup-like dynamics are not produced by courts that remind the majority of its limits, they are produced by majorities that refuse to recognize any limits at all.

Power is not measured only by constitutionality, but also by morality.

Prime Minister Rama wants to talk about the Constitution and the separation of powers.

This sudden zeal for constitutional citation may sound, on the surface, correct.

But the core of misgovernance lies precisely here, the public interest is not protected only by formal limits between branches of power, but above all by moral standards set higher than the legal minimum.

The Constitution tells a government what it is allowed to do.

Higher morality tells it what befits a country that wants to climb out of the swamp.

Max Weber, in public leadership theory, speaks of an ethic of conviction and an ethic of responsibility.

The justification “we are within the law” belongs to conviction in the narrow sense.

The decision “do I keep in office or remove an official under serious criminal suspicion, regardless of the presumption of innocence” belongs to political and moral responsibility.

In a democracy, it is not enough not to break the law.

Leadership is measured precisely in the gray zones where the law falls silent and morality speaks.

When the Prime Minister settles for the line “the court has overstepped its limits,” instead of saying, “my government will set standards higher than what the Penal Code requires,” he chooses to hide a refusal to place moral weight on power, and shifts the entire debate to “competences”.

That is the mark of a power logic, not of a republican culture.

The court and the government: who controls whom?

The separation of powers, from Montesquieu to Madison, is not an abstract slogan.

Because it commands the machinery of the state, the executive carries a permanent risk of sliding into arbitrariness.

Courts exist precisely in order:

• to protect citizens from government,

• to remind the majority that its mandate is not a blank check,

• to signal that power is measured not only by votes, but by limits.

When a court issues a suspension order, it is not entering into politics.

It is asking a concrete question:

Is there a risk that an official under investigation, holding significant weight in government, could influence investigations, tamper with evidence, or use authority to distort the truth?

If the answer is “yes”, temporary suspension from office is a protective measure, for the process and for society.

In that sense, the court does not intrude on the “game of power”.

It places boundaries around the game, in the name of the citizen.

Edi Rama, instead of recognizing this, chose to denounce an alleged “overreach of the judiciary” into government.

That way of speaking resembles more the irritation of a majority that cannot accept being checked than the tone of a prime minister who values the constitutional order.

Criminal innocence and political responsibility are not the same standard

Too often, in defense of officials under investigation, we hear the refrain:

“Presumption of innocence, no one is guilty without a final court decision.”

The presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of criminal justice.

But political responsibility follows a different standard:

• in criminal law, you may wait for a final verdict;

• in politics, you must remove any serious doubt about the integrity of governance.

In serious states, a minister bears political responsibility for:

• grave suspicions,

• scandals that shake public opinion,

• facts that, even without a criminal conviction, put the dignity of the office in question.

Innocence is a criminal category.

Credibility is a political category.

Confusing the two is the weapon most often used by the corrupt.

When a government refuses to set this standard high, the court becomes the only instrument that:

• temporarily removes an official from office,

• protects the investigation,

• protects public trust in the common order.

This is neither a coup, nor a judicial whim.

It is the direct consequence of an absence of internal moral standards in governance.

In other words, where the executive refuses to cleanse itself, the court is forced to apply a minimal brake.

When the Prime Minister fears morality, he hides behind the Constitution

Rama speaks of separation of powers and “overstepping” by the court.

As a formal legal argument, this can sound like a defense of institutions.

In substance, we see something else, an executive that refuses to acknowledge a dimension of power that goes beyond the word “competence” and is called conscience.

Leadership does not begin where it shields itself from scrutiny.

It begins where it:

• imposes on itself stricter limits than the law demands,

• accepts the removal of a high-ranking official to affirm that the interest of the state comes before the reputation of a cabinet,

• resists the temptation to relativize everything as a “political game”.

Instead of speaking about moral standard, the Prime Minister seeks to confine the debate to the narrow terrain of formal legality.

This is the old trick of power structures that downgrade politics into technique and suffocate vision in procedure.

The court does not “do politics” when it sets boundaries; the government does politics when it refuses to accept them

In every theory of the separation of powers, the court is:

• the last sentinel of order,

• the shield of the citizen,

• the line of reason that says to the executive: “this far, no further.”

When a court suspends a deputy prime minister from office, it sends a signal of accountability:

• it tells society that no one stands so high as to never touch the ground,

• it reminds the government that trust is conditional on conduct, not guaranteed by votes.

If the government wanted to show true leadership, it would say:

“We respect the decision. We will cooperate fully with justice, and we will set moral standards that keep our governance above any doubt.”

Instead, the government chose the refrain:

“The court is playing politics.”

In reality, it is the government that is playing politics, because it:

• defends everyone around it without reservation,

• turns every judicial decision into a “threat to governance,”

• cynically merges the fate of a subordinate with the fate of the state itself.

Leaders who fear the light, blame the mirror

The Balluku case is a symptom, not an exception.

The real question is this:

Do we want a state where the government is willing to place morality above the legal minimum, or a state where every moral principle is relativized in the name of “stability”?

A prime minister who builds high standards says:

“As long as investigations are ongoing, the link between this official and her office is a problem of trust, not merely a technical legal issue.”

A prime minister who defends the game of power says:

“The court has gone too far, let’s see what the Constitution says…”

The gap between the two is the gap between a statesman and an architect of alibis.

Leaders who fear the light blame the mirror, and the more they kill the light, the more they tremble before reflection.

Where LRE – Rinisja (Renewal Movemenet) stands?

As the dignitarian right, and as a movement that seeks to rebuild trust from the ground up, we believe that:

• a court does not stage a coup when it sets limits on the executive;

• any senior official under serious suspicion must be distanced from office, to protect trust in the state;

• serious governments see justice as an ally of public morality, not as a political rival.

For us, Albania needs:

• a culture where political morality stands above the legal minimum,

• a governance where political responsibility leads, not follows, the prosecutor,

• a society where leaders are stopped before the file stops them.

The court, in every case, protects the country from arbitrariness.

The government, in this case, pushes it deeper into relativism.

The court does not stage a coup by suspending a deputy prime minister.

The court simply says: “Power has limits.”

Institutional coups occur when the majority of the day confuses itself with the state,

when morality is replaced by alibi, and when justice is imagined as an enemy rather than a mirror.

In the Balluku case, the court delivered its message.

The leadership that Albania needs would be the one that hears that message, and raises the standard.

The leadership we have, instead, tries to blame the mirror.

The future belongs to those who understand that the game of power comes with an expiration date, while the order of justice and morality is the only thing that can make a nation stable, respected, and free.

Kristina Nano

Chairwoman, LRE - Rinisja | PhD Candidate in Leadership, James Madison University (JMU), USA