Lawyer Ylli Manjani, in a note on social media, has responded to all those who ask him "why did you change your stance?".
Manjani says that he has not changed and that his positions have been and will be the same. He points out that he has not changed, but people's preferences change, which according to him are based on interest, while asking people not to waste time with "conspiracies that they bought me with public positions!"
Ylli Manjani's note:
To all those who keep asking me "why did you change your stance?", I tell them that my stances have always been the same.
I do not express my public positions according to worldly interests or fanfare, but for my own pleasure and based on the professional and civic conviction that I create.
I have had neither fear nor hindrance for those public positions, neither when I held public office, nor when I had nothing. I have paid the costs of my freedom to think and express myself, and I have no regrets about that.
Both in politics and outside of it, my opinions have been critical and still remain so for:
1. Arrests and imprisonment without accountability, without necessity or proportionality, without evidence and without charges;
2. Investigations, or worse, trials and convictions based on political, popular or anonymous complaints;
3. Investigations and trials with wiretapping data not based on reality;
4. Abusive interference in private life, homes and private environments;
5. People's trials with materials extracted from investigative files;
6. Criminal penalties of Albanians against Albanians on behalf of foreigners;
7. Wild and meaningless criminal laws that criminalize people with force;
8. The creation of a state of prosecutors, a prosecutor's office with two heads, and a republic of experts;
9. Placing judges under total control by SPAK;
10. The destruction of the country's Constitution and its degradation into a personnel regulation and anti-corruption pamphlet with ignorant internationals;
11. The destruction of the justice system with dishonest, completely subjective and unfair vetting;
12. Handing over politics and state affairs to ambassadors and even chargés-de-affaires, and ignoring the people who are voted in to make decisions;
13. The destruction of politics for the benefit of society through the use of foreigners, lobbyists, NGOs, and embassies;
14. The cannabization of the country as the worst alternative for development;
15. Criminal penalties for businessmen and companies for purely commercial activities;
16. For the scandalous electoral laws made by consensus and that share power without votes;
17. About the way political ideas and contributions are extinguished in the country;
18. For the political trap that deliberately confuses criminal responsibility with political responsibility, in order to forget the latter;
19. About the way the opposition, in all these years, left the field and the Albanians;
20. On the sanctity of private property and the urgent need to protect it;
21. For the absurd mafia presumption of every Albanian, official and politician;
And for many of my theses and opinions like these. No one has spoken more than me about a new Constitution, a new justice reform with an impartial court, and a new state that will lead Albanians towards the great challenges of the time.
I don't consider critical thinking an end in itself, but a way of thinking.
When I have articulated these theses in public, I have never started from the fact of who they serve or who they please. I have said these things regardless of the trenches, where people see me according to their troubles or political interests.
These are the same theses of mine, often I am the only one in the public space who says them, which politicians in need have liked and like, but also their opponents in the same conditions.
I haven't changed, but preferences change according to interest, and I don't regret it or apologize to anyone for that. I haven't asked anyone to like my ideas. Nor to agree with them.
So, this is who I am. That is, who I was, with or without a function.
Whoever understands, fine. Otherwise, don't waste our time with such questions. Not even with conspiracies that they bought me with public positions!
I remind you again that I have been in public office and I have thought and spoken about these things.