In your article “How I Support the Protest,” you have, with the logical coherence that always distinguishes your thinking, committed your thoughts, and, I believe, those of many other Albanians, to paper.
Many citizens look at the protest from a distance, in the neighborhood of the “ship” but without jumping on or pushing it, because they either have a different point of views about the current state of Albania, or because they are afraid to be used.
But many of those who secretly follow the protest hope that someone else will do the “work” for them; that someone else will show up to take the responsibility to put an end to the social, economic, and political chaos that has compromised in a nearly permanent way that hopes of everyone to live and move forward in this country; that there would be others who join the protest to dissolve the current political blockade, to change the situation in favor of a renovation of the truth, to build a “second republic.”
If everyone stays and looks at the protest, only those who speculate on the Albanian social inertia will win, with the fear of showing oneself in public, with the peaceful passivity of the Albanian people, and later everyone will collectively complain about the absent result, the lost moment, and in despair we will repeat our hidden projects to emigrate.
Once again, Albanian politics would be the “battle field” exclusively reserved for the big boys, the arrogant, and, in the end, those who live as if they didn’t have anything to lose and not those that are more complete, civilized, careful, and rational, but incapable of taking risks. The latter ones will return to their normal roles of “beautiful souls,” eternal victims, those subjects who not yet received the status of “citizens.”
So tell me, Fatos, all those subjects that are unable to transform into “citizens,” what do they have to lose? And, according to you, what is missing for the “beautiful souls” to express with loud voice their opposition, or better, what do those “beautiful souls” need to be ready to compromise, and to take part in the construction of a political systems that is at least acceptable?
Many times I have heard (and read) Lulzim Basha, currently the only one whom we could call the leader of the protest, declare that “his” party has reflected, that it acknowledges the mistakes it has made in the past, and that those mistake have helped to bring the country into its current miserable situation.
According the parameters set by the Christian deity, the sinner should repent that he has committed sins, has to confess, and then has to fulfill the punishment that the priest orders him. In this way, he can at least receive the forgiveness of God.
According to the communist ritual, the forgiveness of God is unimportant; the confession is replaced by an autocritique in front of the collective.
So, as regards the two most well-known methods in Europe, Basha has in both cases that what he can and should do well – repentance, confession, and punishment, with the final one shown by the low support during the previous elections.
But right now Basha is the only leader who with the current law has any real possibility to be elected who has chosen to publicly defend these theses. To leave him alone with this work means to abandon him to the enemy.
If the themes he brings up are the necessary recipes and the final aim is technically feasible, then the possible side effect (of someone else buying the game) wouldn’t be very important. Even because, dear Fatos, if this process begins seriously, the new political standard of the future would attract many people and would give them also the best answer to their current fears.
