The election of Ilir Meta as president reminds us yet again of Rama’s dictum “You haven’t seen anything yet,” which in this case could continue with “I will even make Meta your president.”
The reactions of the public to yet another curiosity were expected. Videos with Meta slandering Rama and Rama slandering Meta have appeared on social networks with incredible speed. This event is considered to be yet another few steps down in the degradation of our politics. Nevertheless, to reduce the entire story to some curiosity of people who don’t have a single bit of morals and respect left, not only for others but also for themselves, or as an irresponsible game between two people that one time met in Gjiri i Lalzit to eat eel and four years later met in a fish market to eat fish and decide on our fate, is a mistake.
If I used a metaphor that I believe that those who use a computer are familiar with, I would say that the dinners of Ilir Meta and Edi Rama with eel and fish have to be seen in this story as a screensaver. If you move your mouse a bit, the screensaver with those faces disappears and the dramatic reality behind to images reveals itself: the absence of the simplest elements of democracy in Albania for the last 25 years.
Today the opposition, and not only them, are barking: “Democracy at risk!” But before we start barking, we have to ask ourselves: Have we ever had democracy during these 25 years? If we would translate the word etymologically, power of the people, I don’t think we would call ours democracy. If we would have even a little bit of democracy in this sense, what happened could not be imaginable nor would it have happened. The problem is that with us everyone knows that for 25 years power has been in the hands of several gangs in a constant war to eliminate each other in dividing the territory and profits from stealing from the Albania. What is currently happening deep down is the transition to a stage where the war between the gangs is entering a new development. With its move, the gang headed by Edi Rama today aims to kill one stone one and half opposing gangs. One gang is the PD, which, being excluded from Parliament, is very likely to be consumed during four years of opposition, but even if it entered the elections that would be its fate. Half of the other gang is the LSI, which, leaving the role of mediator between the two main gangs, loses this function and is becoming the next target of the big one.
I once again insist that it’s a mistake to ascribe this simply to the ability or deception of Rama and Meta, as some say. Nor to the inability of Basha or the corruption of several ambassadors, as others do. Certainly they have their responsibilities in what is happening, but Edi Rama and Ilir Meta and their ambassadors wouldn’t even think about doing this if their parties (and here I mean the three of them, not only the PD) would truly represent the people and not a small group of people that have systematically robbed and stolen from this country.
The core problem with what is happening is that it has been a while for us that anyone asked: Is it ok that we have several parties to represent only a small group of people? Until yesterday it was like that, because this small group people used both the PS and the PD to rob the Albanians, because one gang had Tirana, the other Albania. This happened also because until yesterday the people overall believed more that those gangs could bring change. That’s why that small group of people, to protect itself, worked with both parties. Today a situation has been created in which on the side the business of this minority is mainly dependent on Rama’s party, while on the side the people have lost hope that it can bring change with these gangs. It is therefore subjected to the status quo by choosing either to leave the country of to work in the cannabis plantations managed by the gangs of the government. Here we need to add the fact that in the last years the small group of people we’re talking about has grown a lot, and those criminal organization leaders need the opposition less and less, because they’re getting the job done with the police owned by the majority.
So Ilir Meta and Edi Rama shouldn’t be seen as the only players in the elimination of the PD. They need to be seen in the context of the kleptocratic system that they have installed together with the criminal “oarsmen” with whom they collaborate to steer the Albanian ship toward the final precipice. The elimination of the PD in their trip toward to the precipice is made possible precisely because of the logic of the work and interests of those people. If we were to demand responsibility from the PD in this game, we should say that it has applied the same logic, namely that it didn’t know how to be a representative of the people. That’s why Berisha’s calls for a “democratic revolution” sound today like those calls of the shepherd who lied several times that the wolf was eating the sheep, and whom, when the wolf did show up, no one came to help.
