Every citizen, confronted with the protest, has to ask themselves the question what their position is toward it. Do they support it or not? Do they have to go to the tent or not?
On the day that I write these lines I express my own position. For me, the tent is like a boat that promises a difficult journey, which requires courage and, if it were to sail to its promise, would bring a victory for all of us. This makes me follow it with sympathy and sensitivity, because these people need to be encouraged.
Nevertheless, my position is to support it from a distance. Metaphorically I could say: I encourage everyone, I push the boat, but don’t jump on. Why do I encourage? Because I support the opposition’s analysis of the situation, and especially the argument that we cannot enter elections in this situation, because that would be to legitimate evil with one’s own hands.
The prime minister has now confirmed, without any trace of doubt, that he does not intend to divorce from criminals of the category of Rroshi, Prenga, and so on, but that he has moreover joined them in a pact against the freedom and dignity of all Albanians.
The prime minister has shown with incontrovertible proof that he is encouraging a criminal economy, driven by cannabis and corrupt concessions against the freedom and dignity of all Albanians.
The prime minister has shown, with innumerable proofs, that he won’t leave the state institutions, headed by the police, in their state roles, but that he is steadily transforming them into tools of his state party against the freedom and dignity of all Albanians.
The prime minister has now confirmed that he has no intention to leave the free media alone, but intends to increasingly capture and manipulate it against the freedom and dignity of all Albanians.
Under these conditions, to seek the removal of this prime minister and the incriminated people around him is not only a way to create the possibility for free elections, but also to create the possibility to prevent the further violation of the freedom and dignity of all Albanians. So I support the protest, because the language and reasoning of the opposition matches my language and reasoning about this government and because the means of a continuous protest, until the removal of this government as condition for the elections, seems to me to be the right one.
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Having said that, I also have to express my reservations about why I don’t jump on the boat.
The main reason is that I don’t believe that this is ship is going to the waters that it promised to reach, bringing us to the promised shore. Because our experience has shown us more than once, to point of despair, that in our country right causes have been used by backward people for backward aims.
In order to have the faith to jump in the boat, I would need not to see people on it which, when they were in power, have also themselves made alliances with criminals to steal the free vote, which have sponsored with public money the same media that the prime minister sponsors today, which have stolen and divided public money and property with the the same oligarchs that the current prime minister is dividing with, and which treated state institutions as tools for their party just the same.
Someone told me: get on the boat – i.e., go to the tent in front of the Prime Ministry – and all of this I told him. I answered that it is not up to me pass judgments on this boat, even because I don’t judge it the right moment to pass such a judgment.
It would have been nice if the opposition had come to this protest after passing this judgment themselves. That’s why I decided to support the protest from a distance, and to speak about my reservations toward it, from the position of a journalist, thus protecting the independence of the fourth power, and, above all, the credibility of what the public needs so much in these heated and important days.
