Well-known Albanian writer Lea Ypi has reacted to the massive student protest in Tirana, which has entered its sixth day, expressing her support for the young people who have taken to the streets to demand change.
Post by writer Lea Ypi
Dear friends, journalists and readers who have written to ask for my opinion on the protests in Albania: I made my position clear four months ago and have not changed it. I am repeating it, since the questions continue.
I have never felt represented by the governing left in Albania, and I do not feel represented by the opposition right, which incites crowds to set fires and throw firecrackers onto the boulevard. Violence without a strategy or a plan for the future turns into pointless fratricide. This does not mean that violence in the name of a just principle is wrong in every circumstance. But political violence is justified only when, first, it is backed by a convincing project of social change and, second, when violence is the only way to achieve that project.
So what is the project? It is unfortunate that in Albanian society, 35 years after the fall of communism, the only project for change is presented as a choice of changing rulers. Replacing one individual in power or in opposition with another individual is not a national project; it is a party project. The respective parties are the ones that must take responsibility.
Replacing oligarchy with social democracy, that is the real political project. Unfortunately, today this project is very difficult to realize in Albania and also in the world: partly for geopolitical reasons, partly because our culture and religion get tangled up, partly because of internal conflicts, and partly because the more fragile democracy is and the more aggressive capitalism is, the more oligarchs manage to buy any power, any politician, any official (both those who are there now and those who will come). But also because more work must be done with the older generation to understand the traumas of the past, and with the younger one to turn anger into solutions.
The problem is that democratic standards for demanding transparency from leaders in Albania have never been established. On one hand, because the entire so-called democratic order is the offspring of the Party of Labour (PPSH), from whose ranks came the leaders of both parties that have governed since then. On the other hand, because capitalism does not need democracy in order to develop: the private market only needs to have customers. Corruption is not the cause of the malfunctioning of the political order, but a consequence of submission to the economic order. Under capitalism, the system throws out even the most honest person. Either it uses them by buying them, or it discards them when it cannot buy them.
Now, some answers to the questions I am often asked these days.
Do I condemn police violence? Certainly. A state where the rule of law prevails does not need to keep order with rubber batons. My full compassion and support go to the students in the protest, but also to the police officers who risk their lives for a morsel of bread.
Would I have resigned if I were leading Albania today? Most likely in June. Or perhaps even after the arrest of a deputy or the first minister. Maybe after winning the next mandate. After all, to set a different standard, to hell with it. These are issues on which I have nothing new to add to the debate that is boiling in Tirana. They are rumors for the stations and portals who surely are interested in turning a social alternative into a matter of personal biography.
To the students, readers, friends and activists who share my left-wing convictions, I would advise you to return to protests that are only peaceful, to use the spaces these protests create to build the alternative Albania (and Europe too) needs, and to increase your political influence, however difficult it may be, day by day. I would ask you to avoid tagging along with, being manipulated by, and being divided by those who have no connection to our project. Persistence is needed to build the true Albanian left, the one for which many of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers languished in prison. A great deal of intellectual and political work is needed, but above all, patience is required.