By Filip Çakuli-
I suppose the protest achieved its goal. The traffic lights were uprooted, the bins were burned, the boulevard was turned into a construction site, and the flamingos flew off to warmer places. Even the shops were boarded up with iron and sheet metal. The building materials trade should be grateful to the revolutionaries.
They uprooted everything that stood in their way, but they could not uproot Rama from his office.
The latter placed some wooden chairs in front of the offices, inviting them to dialogue. The revolutionaries set them on fire. Then he placed stone seats. These were armed with molotovs and firecrackers, but they forgot to bring a rope. The revolution stopped halfway.
Every day they called on the people to join them, but the people are wiser and more pragmatic. They do not follow the violent… So they invented a new democracy: they spoke through megaphones in the name of the people. Just as before, when people were arrested at midnight in the name of the people while the people slept.
“Albania demands revolution!” they shouted. But who was Albania? Those in the square, or those in the cafés who followed the revolution with coffee and cigarettes?
It seems the people had delegated their representation without even knowing it.
And so, from tens of thousands, the revolution turned into a mess with a single thread. A revolution that began as national and ended as a family affair.
Now imagine the opposition’s national and international protests ending with only a few participants. Well, they are not embarrassed by the numbers of their followers, but they put us in an awkward position, as we expect and wish for a strong opposition.
I can’t bring myself to call students those who replace argument with “Edi Rama, may you be f***ed”, “Rama legen”, “Rama to prison, Berisha to prison” and other street insults. They seem to be investigators, prosecutors, judges and enforcers all at once.
They have already passed the verdict; the trial is missing. Moreover, according to their principle, both Rama and Berisha should go to prison. Strangely, the revolution has not yet found a solution for the latter. Because the opposition leader wants to privatise a “revolution” that has lasted for months, in the absence of the protesters themselves.
A wise saying comes to mind: they would not let him into the village, so he asked for the priest’s daughter.
But it would be a mistake to confuse protest with vandalism. Governance has scandals without end. Wages, pensions, prices and living conditions are more than enough reasons to protest.
A student should be thinking about exams, not whether they will have enough money for rent and food. Meanwhile, a pensioner should live on the pension, not calculate which medicine to go without. Hope has also been lost that the situation could be fixed. Losing illusions is normal; losing hope is tragic.
The government must listen to them. Despite efforts to fix some things and to hold dialogue about their demands. Let us be realistic: the government cannot solve all the problems, only its own and those inherited from previous governments.
It has invented the “mirror”, like Pizarro facing Atahualpa of the Incas, thinking it is enough to show the “mirror” for reflection.
On the other hand, the opposition must understand that revolution is not made by burning bins, nor by swearing that one represents the people. If the people do not follow you, you cannot take them hostage and force them into the square.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes a duty, an American president once said. But resistance is not uprooting a traffic light, burning a bin, or setting fire to the dialogue chair. You cannot demand a better state by destroying the city you live in.
In the end, the revolution’s balance sheet is impressive: uprooted traffic lights, burned bins, boarded-up businesses, charred chairs and flamingos in exile. Responsibility for violence is individual, as Voltaire wrote: no snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Rama’s chair has not been burned yet. But with vandalism and molotovs, by young people and paramilitaries of the opposition, you cannot remove a legitimate government.
With so much damage and so little result, they perhaps should have demanded compensation from the revolution.