By Irena Beqiraj
Today it is shameful to be a socialist. As I watch videos of young people being dragged away, I feel ashamed of the criminal left of this country. My stomach turns whenever I see old socialists, some grown old in politics and others on the threshold of Saint Peter’s gates, who, in order to keep personal privileges, have lost their political consciousness. The character of a politician is measured not only by the victories they achieve or the reforms they draft, but by the decisions they make when the price of doing what is right is precisely the loss of power. In such moments, losing power can become the highest form of political consciousness.
Today, your political loyalty clashes with the responsibility you have. Obedience to the socialist autocrat forces you to sacrifice personal integrity, the integrity that, perhaps naively, I believed some of you still had. Politics is not a profession, it is a mission. Those who want to engage in politics should be those who want to leave a mark on history, not those who seek to stay in power at any cost, even with violence against children, in order to secure a bit more money for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
History never honors those who stayed in power the longest. It honors those who had the courage to defend the country when others, out of fear, chose silence. A politician who chooses the right side may lose their career, but gains something far more lasting: the respect of history. Power, after all, is temporary. For heaven’s sake, we are all mortal! It is difficult choices that determine the value of a politician and the mark they leave on public life.
Many tell me that you have no shame, that you have skeletons in the closet, that power has emasculated you. But even if that is so, a terrible end is better than a political life without honor. Better to lose everything than to remain a hostage of a political sect that, in my conviction, represents one of the most dangerous deformations of Albanian public life since the founding of the state in 1912.
Karma is not a bitch. On the contrary, it is a divine accountant. Don’t forget this! I have tried my utmost to understand your inability to act. But I cannot in any way accept anyone’s justification among you that it is the young people who are setting Albania on fire. You are the ones setting fire to Albania! For 136 days, people protested peacefully. What did you do during all this time? You continued to pass laws and keep in place mechanisms that allow the passage of money and public property without competition or oversight to Roni and his companions. Not only that, but you mocked the people who were protesting. And, as the cherry on the cake, you offered your loyal presence, at a set time, to admire the new hairstyle of Zeqina and a host of other worthless characters who serve power.
You are the ones setting fire to Albania, because with your economic model of “dolce vita”, with casinos, hotels, wine, drugs and prostitution, you are building a country where young people lose hope for the future. It is you who have turned Albania, as your leader once said, “into the beloved homeland of every buffoon and an enemy land for every Albanian who refuses to become a slave”. And you are the ones keeping Rama’s political corpse in power. Yes, you! Because you never became politicians. You remained transactional, prisoners of the formula “give me, and I’ll give you”. You remained small. You remained obedient soldiers, where you should have been representatives of the citizens.
You turned the party into a shelter of privileges and citizen representation into a market of interests. Instead of exercising power to protect the public interest, you chose to protect power even when it clashes with your responsibility to represent. And this is your tragedy: you know that you no longer serve a political ideal, but the survival of a power that has replaced ideals with interest, conviction with fear, and responsibility with personal gain.
Good iron is never used for a nail. Therefore, today, to be called a socialist is shameful. Not simply because of Rama, but because of you: because you, who should have defended the dignity of the left, have turned politics from a mission into a business, the party from an ideal into an instrument of privilege, and political representation from a responsibility into a market.