Writer and publicist Fatos Lubonja spoke yesterday for News 24 about the failure of the negotiations between the government and the opposition to solve the current political crisis and the possibility of his candidacy as “consensual president.”
According to Lubonja, one of the main problems of the current situation is the far-reaching personalization of the state institutions under the influence of Prime Minister Edi Rama:
It is scandalous what is currently happening with Rama, who immediately removes several ministers but himself refuses to leave the Prime Ministry. What does that mean essentially? I’m not leaving, but ministers can go, the police can go, whether or not the police is responsible he doesn’t care. This simply shows that our institutions have become personalized. What is important is who is Prime Minister. If you are Prime Minister, the rest are just tools. This has to change. Institutions have to be stronger than the person.
Lubonja also declared that although are at least as many plans and scenarios as there are players in this “political game,” none of these actually envision the welfare of the country:
My thoughts are essentially as follows: A government has to be of good will, but unfortunately they [the politicians] do not have the goodwill to acknowledge all the responsibilities they have for this situation in which Albania finds itself.
As regards the recent suggestions that he could be a suitable consensus candidate for the office of President, Lubonja responded with hesitance:
I haven’t thought about it, because I have another position and to put yourself into such a framework isn’t easy. It is a great responsibility. To tell you the truth, even I don’t know the competencies of the President, because my role so far has been that of a free and independent intellectual who has opposed many things.
And if you take up such a role, it’s not that you’re just going there for the praise that you became President, but with the idea “can I change something for the better with these ideas that I have or do I simply lose the possibility to say these things?”
So how much can a President influence the construction of a true, healthy economy, and not a criminal as it is right now in Albania? How can he give and also have power to change the justice system? I know them very well, but as far as I understand, the competencies of the President are very limited and in this aspect, apart from others, you need the consensus of all those people.
