The propaganda shows of the prime minister reached an apex this Friday, when in the center of Lushnja a group of ministers and deputies showed up unexpectedly, who in a ridiculous scene had divided the roles in the theater piece “Cleaning the City.”
Several adult men and women moved around in a small park, one with a garbage bag, another with a lawn mower, while others gathered trash and plastic bottles. Even the director-prime minister himself arrived at the scene, dressed like a rock star, surveying the performance of his underlings from higher ground.
But what was special about his comical sketch wasn’t the humiliating use of ministers and deputies for the fancies of a hardy director. This is no longer a single problem. After he accomplished the artificial insemination of the Socialist Party with the Renaissance, the offspring that has populated the majority no longer has dignity and responsibility in their DNA. They are able to accept to be treated like numbers by the prime minister, to play any role he determines for them, to become the colleagues of people with criminal records, or to be part of a dumpster that is branded by crime, corruption, and drugs. But the issue is not why several individuals, once with public and political authority, have today transformed into marionettes performing all over Albania.
Lushnja showed something much worse. When the prime minister, ministers, deputies, local elected officials, undertake an action and go into the field, a large group of citizens is supposed to follow them and join them in the campaign that pretends to be raise awareness. But in the park in Lushnja, except 10–20 drummed-up activists and a chubby guy taking cellphone pictures, there was no one to there to join Rama’s ministers. According to local journalists, some of the inhabitants looked from their windows how the trash below their houses was gathered, while passerby didn’t even make an effort to turn their heads.
The image that remained of this action was a small theater group that had stopped to perform the next play, without an audience. Of course the group and its director are not interested in the audience. They are their for the cameras and microphones that will register the spectacle of a government at work. And as can be seen from the images, as soon as the prime minister with his sunglasses à la Robert Alia has completed his inspection, they all got back in their cars and moved to the nearest bar. Because these action are no longer considered as a means to accomplish an end, such as the cleaning of Albania, but have turned into an end in themselves, as propaganda of a government that pretends to be working.
Precisely Rama’s government’s excessive abuse of stale and ridiculous propaganda explains also the extreme indifference of the citizens of Lushnje. They know that the government has only come to film. They’ll do a quick sketch in front of the cameras, give some interviews with the tools in their hands, and collect their stuff to return to Tirana. There is nothing more naive than to believe that these parodies will bring any sort of change. We’re looking at a group of powerful people divorced from reality, who since long have transformed into actor in a series made solely for TV.
And this phenomenon reached its peak this Friday in Lushnja. When the actors are aware of the fakeness of their relation with the spectators, but nevertheless continue to play before an empty room. They don’t make an effort to invent a hypocritical cover-up for their manipulation. Let the people think whatever they want, they did their part: they went, performed, showed themselves on TV… They fulfilled the propaganda norm, even though it no longer sticks with anyone. To make propaganda with the aim of manipulating the public opinion is abuse. To make propaganda only for the sake of propaganda is pathological. And if you carefully look at the video of the “action” in Lushnja, they indeed all look sick.
