Continuing his series of meetings to seek accountability from his dependents in the name of the people – which trouble the clear waters flowing from the Prime Ministry – the Leader of the government, Edi Rama, held yesterday a special meeting with the Albanian ambassadors around the world in Tirana.
In this meeting, the Leader held a long programmatic speech about economic diplomacy and its great importance for our small but proud country. He announced the beginning of a new epoch for Albanian diplomacy, which has been neglected for nearly three decades.
Right from the start of his speech, the Leader admonished the ambassadors about the importance and great difficulties inherent to the issue of economic diplomacy:
This is without a doubt a topic with quite complex problems, which requires a deep reflection, a detailed screening of perspectives and thoughts, a complete project and a planned and well-articulated plan of actions and measures.
The Leader severely criticized the ambassadors, calling them “thick-headed,” especially for the weak performance to spread and propagandize the successes and great changes of Albania under his leadership, declaring:
How is it possible that you have been so slow, or to say it in proper Albanian, so thick-headed to feel the urgency of necessity to find the necessary mechanisms, to build platforms, to drafts formulas, sketch out the pathways needed, in the manner that our reality, this place that changes in months and weeks, is portrayed with the necessary agility, continuous engagement, the needed capability and wont, beyond our borders, where they know us little, don’t know us at all, or even worse, know us badly.
The Leader stated that the weak performance of the ambassadors is first of all the result of an old mentality and the ideological remains that they have in their heads, which left them behind on the pace with which the country is moving forward:
From my point of view, this type of routine still looks calamitously like the times when this country was still isolated and didn’t care about the entire world. We need a great revolution through a new approach, a much more dynamic engagement. A willingness and a reinvigorated energy aimed toward the development of the country and not simply the formal representation of the country outside its borders. We need creativity and pragmatism, the quality of which, for 1001 reasons, today is slumbering or completely absent.
Do you ask yourselves how much hasn’t been done, with what you and each of your missions could do for a small country like Albania in uninterrupted change, but also with its very varied and exigent needs, with an unspeakable worry to gain lost time, developed and advanced with a speed that is ruthless because of the context in which the world today is developing. Classical diplomacy, as we may call it – for me ours is not even classical, but simply atavistic – cannot be an option that we should content ourselves with, not for another four years, nor for four another four months.
The Leader emphasized that the responsibility for the weak performance of the ambassadors is even larger under the conditions of capitalism, which is going through a large crisis, and a world that is faced with great risks:
I don’t tell you anything without listening, but I want that you listen to it also here today, because the times have changed radically everywhere around us, geopolitics has accelerated and accelerates every day, the continent that we inhabit is troubled. Globalization has threatened, even broken, the former equilibrium, accelerating the installation of new and often seemingly threatening equilibriums.
Faced with these global difficulties, the Leader advised the ambassadors to embrace a new mentality and self-awareness to implement, together with the government, his teachings in the field of economic diplomacy:
Whether new risks or new opportunities, they seek a new approach, they seek new efforts and solutions, they seek specific and courageous solutions, while in the meantime our country and our society have demands that pile up, legitimate and every day larger, more insisting, demands toward everyone, of course, toward the next government first of all and demands everywhere, in every area, but certainly this holds first and foremost for our diplomacy and our foreign service, because this sphere comprises a part of our people and nation that is much larger outside than inside.
The Leader didn’t fail to point the ambassadors to the fact that both they and he have to be responsible toward the people, uncovering also the dialectical character of this responsibility – responsibilities today are larger than yesterday and tomorrow they will be even larger:
The transformation that we have started is epochal, but the chasm with where we need to be is abysmal and as a result and naturally also the responsibilities of anyone who is paid by our taxpayers today. My responsibilities, the responsibilities of the high political representatives, your responsibilities as high representatives of the state, outside the fatherland, are today larger than yesterday, and will be tomorrow be larger than today, and the arch of the responsibility of the growth of these responsibilities is many times more intensive than it was even a few years ago.
The Leader also gave valuable teachings to the ambassadors about his they will be able to fulfill their duties and responsibilities in the future:
And together let’s include all those who have something to say and to contribute in this process, to analyze and consider the legal, administrative, economic discretions of the foreign service in the promotion and support of projects, whether foreign investments or commercial exchange of the country; privileged access, possible interventions and necessary incentives for the foreign service, for the ambassadors themselves, according to the weight of the initiatives organized and projects benefited; human resources that are needed for these aims, reorganizations and maybe new structures inside and outside the country in the service of these aims; the coordinating state authority of this approach, no doubt with the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the helm, but necessarily with a broad inclusion of other governmental and non-governmental actors.
At a brilliant moment, right out of Orwell’s Animal Farm, the Leader gave the ambassadors the motto for their work – “More with Less”:
The entire governance, starting with the new government, will be based upon the principle “More with less.” This principle will also hold for this ministry, and for our embassies and consulates.
Finally, the Leader told the ambassadors that they have to report in writing to him for fulfill the teachings and duties decided today for them (even though except for empty words, the Leader didn’t manage to articulate a single vision, idea, concept, or strategy concerning the issue at hand):
I will request and will expect every three months a detailed, personalized overview for each mission, of the efforts that have been made, the activities that have been organized, or are in preparation, in the broad and extended framework of economic and commercial relations. And how and how much these have been reflected in the volume of exchanges regarding the opportunities for business and investments, in the quality of the political, economic, and commercial contacts and relations on all levels. Contacts with business owners, chambers of commerce, tourist operators, analyses of models and other practices have to be from now on high priorities on your agenda.
