OVER THE COURSE OF A YEAR: THE PRESIDENT’S BOOMERANG
The communist dictatorship has suffered a heavy defeat, but is still trying to remain standing in modified forms.
At the forefront of these efforts is Mr. President himself, who has remained a prisoner of the clichés that “the state and power in Albania can only be his,” and believes he can initially come out on top by playing a game of “cat and mouse” with democracy.
No more than two years ago, he considered it an honor to appear before the people as a champion of preserving the thinking and traditions of dogmatic Bolshevik communism. His motto was that “nothing like what happened in Eastern Europe will ever happen in Albania.” Today, that slogan sounds like a curse upon him. After the execution of the Ceaușescu couple, he made a sharp turn and declared that “changes must be made, but we will make them ourselves.”
In April–May of last year, with a few political, legal, and propagandistic acrobatics, he wanted to appear as the initiator and standard-bearer of democratization. To secure personal political capital, he also imposed the 80-percent barrier for workers who did not work, a measure now recognized by everyone as ruinous for our economy. When he thought he had fooled both the Albanian people and the UN Secretariat, and, through it, a certain axis, he gave the green light to the mistreatment of people by the police when they wanted to travel abroad, and to the merciless killing at the border of those attempting to leave without permission. When people who had had enough began entering embassies in groups, the shocking events of July 2 were provoked. Never before had it happened to the state that foreigners came to take its children away from its own capital. The President and his associates frightened Albanians and foreigners as much as they could. He wanted to deceive the world; instead, he was exposed before it and brought indelible shame upon Albania.
While the world was being told that democracy in Albania was moving forward cautiously and securely, supposedly in the democratic spirit of Ramiz Alia (he did not mind the epithet “the Gorbachev of Albania”; he would return to it), at home he kept watch over freedom of initiative and thought. He asked Communists to show the same kindness as in the struggle against bandits, “gangs,” kulaks, and so on: collectivization and the purges. He supported those intellectuals who wanted a little “democratic” discussion, while warning everyone else that they risked going as far as pluralism of thought. Anyone who demanded political pluralism, however, was branded a heretic in word and, according to him, could be neither with the state nor with the traditions of history.
But when he saw that what he was saying did not bring everything fully to light, he kept up the appearance of speaking as a democrat, while the PPSH tried to make do with the words of a few people. In April–May 1991, Mr. Alia accused “volunteers and absurdities” and “monist political exclusions.” Meanwhile, the PPSH quietly announced that the electoral parties were not independent, and with a blunt “the evil is …” [text unclear]. Thus continued the efforts for pluralism and “again” [text unclear].
Looking back carefully at the year now ending, at Ramiz’s conduct, at the way he made gestures and “embraces,” apparently with the aim of influencing the process of building [text unclear]. Only
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At any cost and under any conditions, Albania’s president wanted to be president. But he managed to become nothing more than the president of Albania’s Communists and the personification of the president most Albanians do not want.
The PPSH and its First Secretary, immediately after political pluralism was established, began preparing for fierce revenge against democratic forces and to establish a communist neo-dictatorship. The Albanian people welcomed 1991 with news of the mass exodus of Albanians across the border into Greece, where the barbed-wire fences, symbol of ten years of horror, were torn down. This marked the beginning of a series of tragic episodes of mass exoduses and uncontrolled departures by Albanians, forming a chain of actions by enemies of the Albanian nation to deprive it of as much of its human resources as possible and break it apart. For the PPSH and its First Secretary, this was naturally a victory, because it allowed them to accuse democracy and rob it of its most active and effective forces.
But, once again, events did not obey the words of the master of Albanian dogmatic communism. The students returned to the political battlefield and gave their struggle an even more pronounced and sharper anti-communist direction. As a sign of their hunger for [text unclear], they named the idol of Mr. Ramiz Alia and the PPSH leadership: the dictator Enver Hoxha. At the height of their fury, Mr. Alia and the Enverist clique around him made plans to punish the besieged students by the harshest means, during the “December 17 hunger strike organized in Albania” [text unclear]. Tirana, too, became Stari Terg. But the murderous plans and calls for violent action against the students failed, because all the workers and democratic people of Tirana rose in support of them. On February 20, together with the demolition of the dictator’s statue, his myth was broken once and for all. Ramiz Alia and the PPSH lost their hold over the people. Ramiz Alia’s terrifying order to massacre the people of Tirana that day also remained unexecuted, a stain of shame and criminal failure that can never be erased or become time-barred. What a terrible boomerang for politicians who bring about such popular tragedies, especially in times of democratic change!
But Mr. Alia took this fatal blow to the myth of communism and Enverism in Albania with such shock and anger that, instead of drawing logical conclusions from the situation, he and the other top parties turned to further anti-popular and anti-democratic actions. These culminated in the establishment of the government on February 22, with the Union of Officers’ school as its center of operations, and its extension to several districts of the country [text unclear]. Although he was not head of state, Ramiz Alia sought, by unconstitutional means, a “presidential proclamation” that would allow him to govern by his own decrees. He wanted to exploit the situation to settle accounts with the democratic forces, but once again he was wrong and failed. Popular resistance prevented him from carrying out what had been planned: an open personal dictatorship. But the ruling clique failed to understand the grave consequences for democracy and the Albanian people. Instead, the country was plunged into an atmosphere of extreme tension, insecurity, intimidation, and state terror. Fanatical Communists, obedient Sigurimi agents, Enverist soldiers, informers, veterans, and indoctrinated people, intimidated or recruited, were put to work for the PPSH’s strategy. Through pressure, deception, and even fraud, the PPSH managed to win two-thirds of the seats in the March 31 parliamentary elections.
Ramiz Alia himself, however, suffered the heaviest political blow. In the constituency where he was a candidate, the voters overwhelmingly voted for the opposing candidate, the one from the PPS. The sensation of the March 1 elections in Albania was precisely the first victory by an ordinary democrat, Fran Kroqi, in a constituency against the Albanian Communist leader. This result completely overshadowed the PPSH’s victories. To console itself and Ramiz Alia, it could think of no better way than to declare that “despite his defeat, he would remain at the head of the party,” and that “the party spoke because Ramiz Alia had worked well for it, while he himself lost because the party had not worked well for him.”
After Mr. Alia had silently accepted this consolation, he and the PPSH hoped to find real comfort in carrying out the plan announced in advance: to drown democracy in blood after the elections. This took the form of the gruesome massacre in Shkodër on April 2, which was then to be repeated in other cities where the PPSH had suffered heavy defeats. But this time the people of Shkodër, through their determination and the blood of their sons, made the democrats retreat and stopped the communist murderous force from going any further. Even today, Ramiz Alia is unable to shake off the stigma of the accusations and the shame of being responsible for this political crime.
In these circumstances, Mr. Alia’s government [text unclear] the post of president of the state. But he showed that he needed this and other things far more than political victories and honors. He accepted the post offered to him by the Communist deputies in parliament, perhaps considering it the best side of his party, although election day had turned into a public political trial for him. Many opposition deputies spoke, with one exception, and refused to lend legitimacy to the decisions and position of a presidential candidate who stood against the interests of democracy, the state, and the Albanian nation. It was truly a good day for everyone when the president’s prestige was destroyed in the eyes of the people on the very first day of his election. It was a warning that, after the elections, the people would become acquainted with the negative aspects of the conduct of the man whom the majority had not elected in the essentially monist parliament, but who was being placed in the government seat of “head of state.”
It is clear that it would be best for the president and the country if he did everything to dispel this atmosphere and somewhat improve his standing as head of state in the eyes of domestic and foreign public opinion. But, instead of changing course, he acted in the opposite way, allowing the PPSH to exercise [text unclear] all Albanian power and the country, through doctrine, manipulation, and efforts to Albanianize everything [text unclear].