By Preç Zogaj
The peaceful flamingo protest has lasted long. Five months without a break. In its best days, through the massive participation of citizens, it exposed major problems of our democracy, such as:
The exclusion of the people in many respects from the system that formally bears the name democracy — rule of the people.
The extreme personalization of power by Prime Minister Edi Rama, beyond the normal prominence that the post gives him.
The pronounced economic polarization and the worsening situation for ordinary families, where about forty percent of them are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to INSTAT.
The high European costs of food items and basic services, yet with Albanian pensions and salaries.
The crisis of the largest opposition alternative, widely perceived in public as held hostage by Sali Berisha for his own troubles and interests.
All of these we saw articulated with denunciations, proposals and concrete demands.
Did Rama reflect on the deep reasons of the protest with the wisdom of the oldest statesman of the transition, in the sense of his longevity in power? No.
Did it occur to him to get ahead of events, surprising the agora for the better, as far-sighted politicians do, who react faster and even give more than is asked when they analyze that a situation is potentially explosive? No.
Did he react institutionally, with words and deeds, to the protest’s demands, where, setting aside the demand for resignation — which he had every right, by God’s grace, to view calmly — the others were and are acceptable? No.
Rama “proposed” to the peaceful protesters a contest of patience, in which he would naturally be in comfortable positions in the office, in the car, on the plane and in the lounge chair. Together with the tigers, he was tempted and amused himself by counting and filming from the air the protesters who dwindled over an exhausting summer. Without considering that the enormous mass of Albanian citizens had thrown the ball back to him, that he had spoken as much as he needed to, and was expecting a response in the kind of silence that gradually fills with noise.
His reaction meanwhile, through initiatives called “Loyal Presence” and “Mirror Albania”, reduced the deep reasons for the protest as if they had to do only with the failure of offices handling the people’s requests and complaints. This is a typical approach of propagandist governments. In fact, the true purpose of the “Loyal Presence” was to strengthen unity within the party. This was clearly seen in the vote on the requested territorial reform, which passed as a show of force by the prime minister with his own people, and as a message of strength to the protest and all the internal and external “enemies”.
What happened after all this? What always happens in the confrontation between the protesters’ demands and a government that expects to wait it out without getting wet, counting on its advantages in the patience contest.
The options grow stale: the protest shifts from one specific demand to another, stronger one, from a soft approach to a radical one, from peaceful to peaceful combined with violent acts.
This is what we are seeing in Tirana and its surroundings these days. Students have taken up the baton in a new awakening and in a vigorous uprising that divides the times and challenges the mental and emotional stereotypes of the time we have lived and are living. It is in the nature of the young generation. Even more so in our days of a pan-European online plebiscite of students and pupils in most European countries. This is how new beginnings pave the way. For the fate of democracy.
Albanian students and pupils in the protest are, at once, both a continuation and an advancement of the Flamingo protest. They are a full cup that keeps filling and overflowing. And this is not only a decisive reaction to the great economic hardships faced by many of them. It would be a mistake to think this uprising belongs only to those with low family incomes. It also belongs to those “with money”. Together, they face the government’s indifference to earlier demands, corruption, irresponsibility and decay.
Above all, they face the decades-long establishment, with the same names and the same faces of unshakable leaders who appear everywhere they turn their eyes, like George Orwell’s Big Brother, since they were in kindergarten, in primary school, in nine-year school, in high school and at university, their whole lives, just as their parents and even their grandparents. These leaders are personifications of frozen time and of a swampy democracy without dialectics that does not flow; they are the mirror of party barracks where they rule with an iron fist.
By pointing their fingers and demanding departure, the Albanian youth of our time, and especially the student youth, have brought to light and put forward for resolution an endemic problem of state formation and state functioning in Albania: that of the leadership cycle. In a democratic order, prime ministers in our country should not serve more than two terms, three at most. Beyond that, they become disfigured. I do not mean their outward appearance. They become disfigured in the sense of falling out of history while still remaining in politics, at the top. That is, in the inversion of the natural order, which is the politician’s exit from politics so that history may speak with its judgment without mercy.
The overturning of this order, as a demonic seduction of a category of politicians of absolute cut, brings great repercussions to their operations and to the governance of the country. It always ends badly for them, but in the meantime they do the damage.
When leaders of this kind usurp parties turned into political barracks, violate every norm of free competition within them, and cling with nails and hands to the chair, even when their corruption and that of their associates makes them mud, the only solution remains limiting the prime minister’s terms by law.
I know there may be interference by malicious or hostile countries in the student-popular protests. There always has been. There will continue to be. It is best that they be denounced by name by the police. The enemies of Albania and of Albanian democracy cannot decide for Albania.
The overwhelming majority of protesters in Tirana and its surroundings are young men and women, honest Albanian citizens of every age. The protest is theirs. Cleansing it of infiltrators with anti-Albanian agendas is the duty of the police and of SHISH. Anti-Albanian stratagems cannot be allowed to do us so much harm that they block our direct democracy.
Rama’s self-projection for a fifth term, with the records of crime in power and of power in crime (with many of them already in investigation halls and in the justice system), is a great provocation to the students, the protesters and the majority of citizens. He cannot even push this mandate forward in the situation he finds himself in. He should consider a responsible departure against the chaos, as befits him and as his civic and national duty requires, as a personality who has led the government for more than thirteen years. He should lead the resolution in the service of stability and of the prospect of free and fair elections.
There are several schemes. Albania has tried them with Fatos Nano, Sali Berisha and again with Fatos Nano several times. Either by electing a new prime minister from the majority who undertakes to lead the country to general elections under a new electoral law; or by forming a government of experts who undertakes the same, leaving time for the new entities emerging from the protest and post-protest to organize.