Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0006/00063.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 41KB | 660 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00063}
$Pretitle{298}
$Title{Albania
Chapter 6B.   Political Dynamics}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eugene K. Keefe, Sarah Jane Elpern, Willaim Giloane, James M. Moore, Jr., Weston White}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{party
organizations
central
people's
state
committee
political
albania
union
hoxha}
$Date{1971}
$Log{}
Country:     Albania
Book:        Albania, A Country Handbook
Author:      Eugene K. Keefe, Sarah Jane Elpern, Willaim Giloane, James M. Moore, Jr., Weston White
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 6B.   Political Dynamics

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

     As officially defined by the Constitution, the state is a form of
dictatorship of the proletariat. The power of the state constitutionally
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 documents 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 dictatorship of the proletariat-that is, the
rule of the people over themselves-is a facade behind which the real
dictatorship of the Party elite operates.

     The Constitution 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 Assembly. 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 Assembly was a
"vivid expression of the socialist demochim. In practice, all candidates are
preselected, and the meetings simply confirm the Party choice.

     Political power, according to official documents, is thus vested in the
broad masses 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 Assembly, composed of representatives elected by direct vote who
exercise the sovereignty and will of the people. The aim of the People's
Assembly, this dogma alleges, is to carry out the main functions of directing
and supervising the people's democratic state. The Assembly's sphere of action
includes practically all the political, economic, social, and cultural fields
through the passage of laws. "These laws," according to an official document
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 document that stated that the laws passed by the Assembly were but the
juridical form of Party policies declared that the concentration of all state
power in the hands of the Assembly was a "vivid expression of the socialist
democracy of the state system of the People's Republic of Albania."

     Another document, published in 1963, asserted 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 document
declared, was rooted in the socialist economic basis of the country, derived
from the state ownership of the means of production and from the property of
the cooperative and collective organizations, principally 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 passed a series
of legislative acts that were subsequently embodied in the Labor Code. As a
result of this legislation, it was asserted, 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 assure their own welfare, the workers in turn had to assume
certain obligations; they were dutybound 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 institutions 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 Assembly, to which official documents attributed the
power to appoint all the higher state organs and on which all state organs
were dependent. In actual practice, the People's Assembly 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 Assembly was also given wide constitutional 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 th