I was around six years old, and after five decades of popular spectacle with the ballot boxes Albania was having free elections for the first time. That afternoon, when my dad returned home, we dressed up and went to an important event happening 500 meters away from home. As we reached the voting center, which was the neighborhood school, we waited for an hour in line, which resembled the lines to buy milk of the time.
I did not quite understand the importance of this thing taking place in the corner of the voting center, but looking at the men and women around, passionately elbowing each other, I reckoned it must have been something really important. I continued harboring a similar thought and a feeling of curiosity until the first time I voted, in 2005. And while those feelings and the meaning of voting started fading, I have always voted. Always, except this June, when for the first time I was part of the biggest political community in the country, the 60 percent that didn’t care to vote.
Despite the fact that I’ve been living abroad for some time now, I was in Tirana on June 25. I do not celebrate Bajram and I don’t fear the heat. So, this nonsense of heat, celebrations, and emigration do not explain my personal boycott. Neither that of my closest family, friends, and acquaintances who for the first time chose not to vote. We couldn’t decide on anyone to vote for. We lacked choices before, too, but this time we didn’t engage in the game of choosing the lesser of evils.
“So, why didn’t you find anyone suitable to vote for?,” someone asked me a few days ago.
First, on the ballot I didn’t find the names that would represent me in parliament, but only the names of the parties, therefore their leaders. So the choices were between Rama, Basha, and Meta.
Rama entered elections without doing an assessment of his work during the last mandate, and without making any clear promises in case his government won. He certainly offered plenty of entertainment. He can do this well, but for that I can also follow a comedy show.
Basha’s candidacy, on the other side, even though he has been in power for a decade (6 years as a minister and 4 years as the mayor) was immature, showing no personal assessment of his work and he looked like he had just landed from the plane from Amsterdam.
The third one, Ilir Meta acted as president that was giving up his mandate for Albania, until he was LSI’s leader, and when he was appointed president, he was ready to give up Albania for his mandate.
And lastly, besides the big parties, there are several smaller parties that are more or less a reproduction of the bigger ones. LIBRA can be excluded from this category, but it was disorganized and didn’t believe in its ability to lead the country; it was only working to get two or three places in parliament. That isn’t bad, but that doesn’t provide a solution to the problem.
So, I had as much choices in this elections, as one has at a supermarket who sells sour wine bottled in different sizes and tagged with new colorful tags.
“What, is it Rama’s fault that there’s no alternative?,” the militants respond eagerly.
The lack of alternatives is neither Rama’s nor Basha’s fault. But they hold significant part of responsibility being at the top of the oligarchic system, resembling the nuclear bunkers of Enver Hoxha. This bunker-system is impossible to penetrate, the doors are guarded by a group of officers that have blocked the inflow and have hung the keys around their necks.
These current-day officers make money to make politics, and make politics to make money. As a result, the power is concentrated, treating public property like a personal asset. The other people dream to be enslaved by this system.
Having access to the legislation, these officers lay down the law, tailoring the legal system as if it were a suit fitting their interests. It doesn’t come as a surprise that their main goal is to make lots of money, while staying in power undisturbed.
The most significant example is the Electoral Code, which has always been designed by the leaders of the two biggest parties and as result it has always favored them, making it hard for any outsider who aims to challenge them. To illustrate it, think that in the current elections the Socialist Party took 48% of the votes, but 53% of places in parliament. So the 5%, or 7 deputies were not elected by people’s votes but by the election formula (with 67 deputies he couldn’t control the steering wheel). Similarly, PD won 4 extra deputies that wouldn’t been possible given another election scenario. On the other hand, LIBRA party won 2% of votes, and should have had at least 2 deputies, but didn’t get any because of the election threshold.
But don’t forget that the number of deputies in parliament is only the end of a long unfair, unequal, and dishonest election process. During the campaign, big parties had 200 times more TV time to state their election programs, present their leaders and joke around as well. A possibility that was totally denied to the other parties, and to the common voter.
In addition, the big parties get money from the state’s budget for their campaign, the new parties don’t. In spite of this they profit from legal and illegal funds from businessmen that ask for favors, and traffickers that ask for freedom. Add to it the corrupted and intimidating powers of the big parties, which govern the local and central government, to understand how hard is to face them.
Finally, the new parties are discriminated in the process of vote counting, when doubts for vote altering are higher. The large parties control the whole administration gang of elections starting from KQZ to the vote counters, to the election college, increasing the danger that votes for new alternatives will be distributed among old parties. The most that new parties could do is to witness live how their votes are being stolen.
If you need more proof that the party mechanism is the one that gives them power, think no further than Erion Veliaj and G99. A group of inspiring youths, G99 did not take one mandate in 2009 elections. But after joining the PS, the same people were appointed mayors, deputies, and members of the municipality council.
In these circumstances, in a race totally controlled by oligarchs that are leading the system, it is impossible to have new alternatives on the ballot sheet. There are certainly cases, when new parties are born as e result of games played by big parties, but such schemes never produce alternatives.
“Fine, but if you don’t vote you cannot complain,” some self-complacent stubborn people respond.
Those who share this viewpoint, think of man as a some kind of polar bear who right after voting returns to his cave, only to wake up from a lethargic sleep four years later. I doubt that a similar blind trust, to hand your life to a representative, is practiced even among the most devoted believers.
In any case, I think differently. My right to participate in public work, to become organized politically and to express my thoughts does not start and end with my vote. These are rights guaranteed by the constitution and international convents. And if this weren’t enough, however much I wanted it to, the act of not participating in voting does not exclude me form the duty to pay taxes and fees. So as an ordinary taxpayer I have the right to complain and also put continuous pressure on those that misuse these taxes.
Do I recognize that my act of non-participation does not stop parties from being in power? Of course I do, but given that parties don’t differ at all one from the other, in essence it is as if I had voted. The difference is this: had I voted, I would have legitimized the winning party, considering my vote a support for its crookedness. So, I have more rights to complain than someone who through their vote has given the moral force to the next crook.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that I do not have any regrets regarding this June and the assumption that one evil is less harmful than another, because it is clear that if you remove the names, it will be hard to tell one from the other. In 1992, we voted hoping that Berisha would bring democracy, but he became a bigger dictator than Ramiz Alia. We voted in 1998 because Nano promised he would return the money stolen from the Ponzi schemes, but he left a bag full of debt. We voted again, in 2005, for Berisha trusting he would fight corruption with “clean hands,” but his corruption almost blew up half of Albania. In 2013, we voted Rama so he could revive the economy, but he made a mess out of the economy, planting palms. As a result, I was better off not choosing than choosing, this time around.
Do I miss the environment of the voting center? Yes, of course. This time I didn’t harbor a curiosity. No matter how hard men and women will push each other around, they wouldn’t stop the next crook from impoverishing and depriving them. As I enjoyed the breeze of a summer afternoon, I made some time to write down these rows. And honestly, I have one regret… Why the heck did I vote all these years?!
