A vote of confidence in the government proposed by a prime minister is a solemn moment for every prime minister in every country in the world. The way Parliament will support that government depends on the vote of confidence. Therefore, in genuinely pluralist parliaments, prime ministers try to meet the reasonable demands of other parties, whether or not they are coalition partners. Such demands are not taken into account only in those parliaments where one party has an absolute majority, as is happening here. With decisions made by the Party’s Central Committee and its Political Bureau being approved without question at every other legislative or executive level, we have now assumed the form of a one-party dictatorship: the Labour Party, even if it may arise outside Parliament, uses the mechanism of the vote to give its diktat the force of law through the supposedly pluralist mouth of Parliament. So what has changed? Nothing; we are where we were. Of course, this concerns matters of substance. The only change is that problems are discussed openly, MPs express their views, and the people can judge more clearly how right they are. We make this argument not simply because the Labour Party has a majority, but because it is using this superiority as it pleases. Although he knew that opposition MPs would oppose Gramoz Ruçi’s candidacy, Mr Fatos Nano (we imagine President Ramiz Alia agreed) appointed him head of the National Security Committee. After much regret, two days of postponements and efforts, they reached an agreement with the opposition, but in substance nothing changed: temporarily, the Minister of Public Order, that is, the former deputy minister who is not responsible for the events in Shkodër, will perform the duties of head of State Security. The opposition raised its voice forcefully and rightly against this move, but no: that voice was lost in the ether and nullified by the voting mechanism. Yet it cannot be nullified in the hearts of the people (and this includes the honest members of the Labour Party), who demand that whoever is responsible for that tragic political killing no longer remain in power. There was also a lengthy discussion about land. The Labour Party wants it to remain state-owned. The opposition insists that it be given free of charge to the person who works it. The best solution, at least for now, is to grant the right to use it. It makes no sense for us to build a market economy in the city—that is, capitalism, where private property prevails—and have centralized socialism in the countryside. This is downright paradoxical, but Mr Nano considers it reasonable. So let the Democratic Party MPs, or those of “Omonia”, discuss as much as they like; we ourselves hold the key to resolving and deciding every issue. Another important objection from the opposition concerned the merger of the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports with the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Youth. Poor sport—how many times it has been grafted onto and mixed up with all sorts of committees and departments! Even now, when it had been independent for a while, that right was taken away, and Moikom Zego, a literary writer and scholar of antiquity, will now also direct sports. Just wait for progress to be made with such administrative originality—something that even Çinkshiani, I believe, would not find surprising. But never mind that either. It is enough that what the Labour Party proposes through its MPs remains unchanged. And then there was the fact that the programme had no specific, detailed measures… For this reason, the opposition did not give the government headed by Prime Minister Fatos Nano its vote of confidence. But that did not stop him from setting off for London that very day. Still, a question naturally arises, one that pains us: “Will Europe take the requests of a red prime minister into consideration when he has not received the opposition’s vote of confidence as a bloc?!” We would like it to, because that would be in Albania’s interest. But will the European chancellery offices—which are allergic to communism and its attendant dictatorship—be able to set aside their convictions and truly believe that they are facing the prime minister of a pluralist parliament, when the Communists make the law? They will be convinced that they are dealing with a man of broad culture who commands three Western foreign languages and speaks them fluently. That is no small thing, but it remains only a matter of personal sympathies. They may be convinced that Mr Nano is not an orthodox Communist like Mr Çarçani and Albania’s former apparatchik officials; yet, in the end, they are unlikely to reconcile themselves to the new practice of one-party diktat through Parliament, which the Party controls both inside and behind the scenes. The freshest example is the debate over the appointment of the heads of the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor General and Deputy Prosecutor General. Although it is well known that harsh sentences have been handed down in Albania and that there have been many fabricated trials (as one MP also said), Mr Kleanti Koçi was once again proposed and elected President of the Supreme Court, having served for years first as vice-president and then as president of that court. The opposition also agreed with this candidacy, but it was also said that the Supreme Court should have young jurists, uninvolved in the well-known practice of handing down sentences for wiretapping and other legal matters. This was further borne out by the choice of candidates for Prosecutor General and Deputy Prosecutor General. In short, neither candidate was bad. But it was said of Prosecutor Petrit Serjani that he had been a judge and an investigator. Of course, he bears responsibility for the events in Tirana and for the many investigative proceedings that have taken place. How can he be appointed Prosecutor General?! And why should the opposition’s voice not have been heard when, quite logically, it proposed Mr Spiro Peci, a prosecutor in Durrës who has worked in this field throughout his career? Other specialists and other candidates for Prosecutor General were proposed here, too. But no: we had to stick to the old Muka routine and approve what we had said, even if the person is not a genuine specialist in the relevant field. We have suffered so much from this kind of cadre policy, and it seems we will continue to suffer, because the Labour Party cannot easily relinquish ideas rooted over nearly 50 years. Thus, Spiro Peci was elected Deputy Prosecutor General, and one might say that this is a small matter, especially since there are capable and honest specialists as well. But it is not so. The time has come to respect specialisations too, because we must move forward to catch up with the time we have lost—and we have lost a great deal. Just as this assembly is now losing whole days and hours because of its organisers’ incompetence, suspending sessions and scheduling breaks in a way that is entirely unbecoming of a parliament. Why did opposition MPs have to raise their voices to ask why they were given the list of candidates for the Supreme Court and its subordinate courts only today, one hour before the vote? Couldn’t the material have been provided two days earlier, with a summary of each candidate’s qualifications, so that we would know what to say? Or why put 15 people up for a vote when there could have been 20 or more, from whom the 15 best could be chosen? There you have it: we must liberalize and abandon dictatorial practices that stifled debate and brought forward only those appointed from above to be elected. Why do we still have so many remnants of a long past from which we are struggling to break away, when the voting mechanism, in many important cases, operates in our realistic (one-party) parliament for decisions, which is pluralist only in discussion? Will Europe hear the knocking of Nano’s voice? No. In today’s world, with the high level of development it has achieved, with specialists and studies far more qualified than ours, and with politicians shaped by continuous parliamentary debates and active political life, people cannot accept the argument that things should be done this way simply because we want them so. If you want to be respected, respect what is European. And if the Helsinki Charter says that ministers of defence and public order—or of the secret service—should be civilians, not military personnel, do not hesitate. When the developed world imposes sanctions and passes laws, it draws on greater experience and a higher level of development. Therefore, they should not think that the chancellery offices will be easily convinced by what Mr Nano tells them.

It is quite clear that, with an absolute majority in Parliament, the Labour Party had no real need to form a coalition with any political force. So what prompted it so suddenly, after a fierce election campaign filled with slander and insults against the opposition, especially the Democratic Party and its leaders, to become so “generous” and “tolerant”?! What compelled it to sit down not at the table of “fair dialogue”, but directly at the table of coalition and government cooperation?! First, purely political and partisan reasons, concealed behind the attractive label of “national interests”, led the Labour Party to extend its hand in “friendship”. In a way, it is continuing its “election campaign”; indeed, it is exploiting Parliament’s platform for this purpose. It is trying to create the image of itself as the champion of dialogue, tolerance and democracy. If the Democratic Party and the other parties were to accept the coalition, then with a single “clever” move the Labour Party would achieve “the disappearance of the opposition as such”. The opposition would be transformed from an adversary into an ally. For before embarking on concrete government cooperation, the parties would have to develop, draft and approve a joint programme, whose implementation they would pursue with united strength. The party in power and the government, most of which would be Labour Party members, would thereby be shielded from opposition criticism. At the same time, accepting the coalition would also alienate from the opposition those supporters who voted for it because they openly disagreed with that kind of coalition with the Labour Party. This would have been the first proof that the opposition does not keep the promises it made during the election campaign, and would thus call its honesty and resolve into question. Second, the local-government election campaign (which must necessarily use the proportional system) cannot be as far off as some might think. A pluralist parliament cannot remain for long dependent on a wholly monist local government, elected according to its own conditions. The Labour Party knows this well, and is therefore hurrying to prepare in this way (including through its calls for a coalition) so that it itself will be the winner in politics. Here too, one cannot say that it has miscalculated! Third, we do not believe there is even one person, however slightly serious, who would not acknowledge, at least in their conscience if not openly, that the severe and profound economic, social and spiritual crisis—the worst in this half-century—is the consequence of the mistaken and failed economic policy provoked and imposed by the Labour Party. The debate about whether changes have been made and whether we should deny some achievements seems to us a desperate attempt “to find an alibi”. There have been achievements, because the people worked and did not prosper, but they were administered in such a way that, in the end, they produced the catastrophic situation we see before our very eyes! It goes without saying that this situation cannot be overcome in a month, or even in six or twelve months. It is dishonest to say it, but it is true: what was systematically destroyed over nearly fifty years cannot be rebuilt in one year. And those who destroyed it are even less capable of doing so. The Labour Party knows this well, as it holds the country’s actual economic data. In these complex circumstances, a coalition with the opposition would have been very useful for the government in power. It would have had the opportunity to share the achievements and possible failures with the opposition. This would have allowed it to say, sotto voce, that even these people, who harshly criticised our 46 years of leadership, had not done anything to be proud of. Responsibility for the mistakes would have been spread around and generously shared by everyone, so no particular political force would be blamed. And, as in the old days, some “scapegoat” would surely be found, dismissed from office and position as incapable, sluggish, incompetent, and so on. Again, one cannot say that the Labour Party leadership had done its sums badly! Fourth, one cannot say that the Communist parties of Eastern European countries, including the Labour Party, have enjoyed a positive reputation among Western governments. The experience of the Soviet Union, Romania and Bulgaria, with their prolonged economic and social crises, has done little to increase their credibility, if it has not had the opposite effect. In these circumstances, a coalition with the opposition would help create a different, more acceptable view of the Labour Party and the Albanian state it leads in the West. Even if this kind of coalition were not accepted, a proportional arrangement alone would certainly contribute—though less—to improving its image as a democratized party. “Fifth and finally, the opposition’s refusal to join the coalition suits the Labour Party for propaganda purposes: how democratic and tolerant this Labour Party is!” (The generosity of a victor!) Instead… (Continued on page 3) ROED ESDARA

— DIALOGUE WITHOUT THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE — It often happens that, when trying to understand the mechanisms that establish the conditions for the emergence of a genuine parliamentary life, one follows two different paths—parallel, yet closely connected. Thus, as I followed Natasha Lakon, the only woman MP to have spoken so far, a vision came to me. She spoke about the miserable condition of Albanian women in every respect, about their entirely inferior position at every level. This is evident here in Parliament too, with such a minimal number of women MPs. Are there perhaps more of them?! Could they find salvation in old alternatives that are being modernized more and more every day in their manifestations: Everything real is harsh, and everything reasonable is real. The vision I mentioned above became clearer as I focused on the figure of the President of BGSH, Mrs Lumturie Rexha. Where is she? Why does she not speak on behalf of Albanian women? I look around the Parliament and at the parliamentarians, but in vain. She is not there at all. I remembered. A few days ago I had seen her at Rinas with a large amount of luggage. Then I learned that she was leaving for America. Making the obvious deduction, I assumed the luggage consisted of gifts she had prepared from BGSH funds. In any case, I will not pursue this comparison, who knows what it might lead to… Still, the question continues as an inner monologue: How is it possible for an MP, who represents the Labour Party and is supposed to defend the women of the country, to leave Parliament to fend for itself at such a crucial moment and go on a “vacation” in America for a month?! How is it possible, and what will she do in America? How is it possible for the President of the Women’s Association to go there with her vice-representatives and spend… not merely to travel all the way to America, at a time when she should be attending to the affairs of the party, at a time when she should be in Parliament, a mission she celebrated in her office on 1 April while dancing the “ma-lenakën”, her favourite dance. As for the second question, the 6,000 dollars and the airline tickets paid for out of the women’s fund seem to make the immortal slogan echo in her ears: “Whatever the Party wants, the people do…” Of course, women are people too, and they will do what their president wants. The Republic of Albania and BGSH share a continuing concern, since this organization has still not been depoliticized. It is assumed, a priori, that the leadership of this organization is stronger than the state itself and the bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Various instructors are of this kind, accompanied as they are, since along with them women everywhere are abandoning the ranks of their organizations and joining strikes in their own time. But let them not worry: there are only three more weeks until Madam President returns. Let them manage with the strikes or without them, with 80% and all the other difficult conditions. The President will put all these problems that have emerged in order as soon as she returns from her American vacation. Naturally, she will discipline BGSH and will not let it fall into disorder. There is nothing left for us but to wish her, from the heart: Welcome back, Madam President!

BERAT On 8 May 1991 in Ura Vajgurore, members of the Republican Party in this town and the surrounding villages organized a local-area meeting, where they discussed at length expanding their ranks, further consolidating their organization and intensifying the Republican Party’s work in the countryside. Every Republican Party member, and especially the special committee of nine people, undertook to carry forward the work already begun. Its chairman is Erem D. Maluka and its secretary is Nazmi Durro. (Continued on page 3)