FORMER FIRST SECRETARY OF THE PP, RAMIZ ALIA, IS MADE TO TAKE HIS HANDS OUT OF HIS POCKETS DURING THE COURT HEARING. The sixth day of the trial against Nexhmije Hoxha and Kino Busheli was not their day. Others were the protagonists: at the prosecutor Mosko’s request, the court summoned the last Communist leader, Ramiz Alia, to testify. His testimony preceded those of the other arrested former members of the Political Bureau: Manush Myftiu, Hekuran Isai, Qirjako Mihali. From the ailing Prime Minister Qarçani, only answers to questions were obtained. As such, the hearing was a kind of mini dress rehearsal for the trials to come: affinities, contradictions and nostalgia among the detainees came to light. Ramiz Alia responded to Nexhmije Hoxha’s «slip of the tongue»—«Comrade Ramiz»—and her explanation, «that is how our tongues have been trained»: «There’s nothing wrong with that, Nexhmije; we were comrades and we are comrades.» It seems Alia’s approval of Nexhmije Hoxha’s arrest is a story belonging to the past. Friends from happier days remain friends (at least in the eyes of the world) during the bitter days of arrest. Alia acknowledged that, as First Secretary, he had instructed that «the family of Enver Hoxha, the former Commander, the former leader, who must be respected as the family of such a person, should continue to be treated as before». With this, he took upon himself a considerable part of the burden of the accusation. Apparently, he declared himself without hesitation a disciple of Enver Hoxha—undoubtedly more moderate and more pliable, but nevertheless a convinced disciple. He left the courtroom calmly, perhaps having managed to preserve his personal dignity. But during the hearing he took his hands out of his pockets when the judge told him to do so. The former pupil 1> 1 of Albania attained the status of a schoolboy. Hekuran Isai brought the humor of Peqin—neither town nor village—into the gloomy courtroom. Although the judge stopped him from reading his statement, he unloaded it like an automatic magazine. In a few seconds Isai managed to say: «I was put in prison by the padr(on?) of the Government of Stability, after I testified about who gave the order to fire weapons at the people.» This was a completely open allusion to his former chief, Alia. This is also the main rift, which will probably become a leitmotif in the trials to come. Isai ended his volley with [?] his his barrage with the words: «You see? ... It didn’t last even a second.» The reward was laughter. That was a blow to the left. Then he struck to the right, saying: «I went abroad only once; the others go dozens of times.» After testifying, the former Minister of the Interior left the courtroom very pleased with the hilarity he had provoked. Manush Myftiu, who could barely walk, was made to testify sitting down. He spoke briefly and with difficulty, then left. Qirjako Mihali remained true to himself, opaque and colorless. After this gallery of former witnesses—exhausted, half-aggressive, half-nostalgic, half-comic, half-frightened—the question arises: did these people really inspire emotion and fear? But it was the machine, the system, that directed things. At first the master—the dictator—assembled it, but as soon as it began to function, it became self-propelled: it selected for itself the gears and wheels it needed. Broadcast by Deutsche Welle, dated 13.1.1993

To understand where the intellectuals stood in what is called the «Albanian tragedy», and especially to understand the miserable effort of the so-called intellectuals today, during the transition from dictatorship to democracy, to cast suspicion on what is being built—or at least what appears on the horizon—by precisely those intellectuals who proclaim their support and suffocation as the strangling of the country and the nation (because they imagine themselves to be Caesars): this is the subject on which I wish to stress from the outset that no reasonable person could take pleasure in arguing for and proving it. I also wish to stress from the outset that this thesis, which I have written as a title, does not contradict Kadare’s thesis that we must not leave the intelligentsia to the dictatorship. What belongs to the dictatorship belongs to the dictatorship. If we were to seek an association with the dictatorship in Albania, the association of an atomic Albanian would not be misplaced: its first product was the deformation of the human being and, with it, the deformation of the intellectual. In opposing Kadare’s thesis in defense of the intelligentsia under the dictatorship (of Albanian intellectuals and the intelligentsia), I do not think that I am giving or surrendering to the dictatorship intellectuals such as Petro Marko, Lasgush Poradeci, Ismail Kadare and others, who survived the genocide—and survived not only for themselves. Intellectual compromises Compromises made by people take all kinds of forms. First of all, under a dictatorship, the first compromise is to stay alive, to feel alive. The compromises of ordinary people are, in any case, compromises by people that do not put other interests at risk. Intellectuals’ compromises are dangerous compromises. Intellectuals in every era have—

—made the life of a country, and thus their compromises have endangered the fate of a country. Such was the compromise of Dr. Dhinika, a man known to history. His compromise in remaining silent endangered history for a long time and continues to endanger it today. Albanian intellectuals kept s-i-l-e-n-t. The chairman of the Academy of Sciences kept silent. The chairman of the Writers’ Union kept silent. The director of the Institute of History kept silent. Other academics kept silent. Even the few academics still alive today kept silent. And when the chairman of the Academy of Sciences kept silent, so did the leading figures in other fields; in other words, history fell silent and was buried. What a fate! The chairman of the Academy of Sciences was a historian. But he kept silent—the head and chairman of the academy, and a historian, too! Why did the so-called Albanian intellectuals, professors with titles and degrees, remain silent? Why did they remain silent for so long and make the great compromise with the dictatorship? If they had kept silent and done nothing more, that would have been very fortunate for Albania. But they kept silent while speaking incessantly, becoming the political and spiritual platform of the dictatorship. How else could they have enjoyed their titles and positions?!! They served the dictatorship through every kind of connection, friendship, marriage alliance, the threads of the Sigurimi, and so on. The honorable gentleman (always silent while speaking and polishing the dictatorship’s suit), Aleks Buda, kept silent. The distinguished professor Dhimitër Shuteriqi kept silent. The gentleman Stefanak Poll[o?] of the historian kept silent. They kept silent while making dangerous compromises so as not to put themselves at risk. Consider how Mr. Shuteriqi could have been chairman of the Writers’ Union, appointed by the Central Committee of the PPSH, without serving that clique. And undoubtedly the editor of the only literary (political) magazine would be his son-in-law, who also keeps silent, though always speaking, just like his father-in-law, who filled entire columns in «Zëri i Popullit». The latter would go even further, as far as the July 1990 rally, the anti-national rally of a fascist kind. Note— (Continued on page 3)

On the first day of the trial of Nexhmije Hoxha and Kino Buçeli, while the prosecutor was reading the indictment, the Dutch journalist sitting beside me (although the only Albanian word he knew was «Mirdita») began taking notes in his notebook. The second word he learned was «lek», the word repeated most often in the prosecutor’s indictment. Much has been said and written about why the trial is limited to economic abuses, but as if that were not enough, comparisons are being made with the expenses of today’s government officials and MPs. «X thousand lekë isn’t a big deal. I thought they had done who knows what. Compared with what these people do today, it’s not even worth bothering with this trial. These people are always flying around.» It gets to the point where you hear people say: «They’re all the same; they make a racket just to sort themselves out...» Voices like these are indirectly or directly fed and amplified by various press outlets as well. Under today’s conditions, when remnants of a collective mindset still exist and people are extremely sensitive to any kind of «injustice», the purpose of feeding such propaganda is, firstly, to increase discontent and make it possible to extinguish all hope in the current government and, secondly, to divert attention from the trial of the bloc members. The words quoted above are commonly heard in cafés and various other places, but they are also heard in respectable public venues. Hekuran Isai, former Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and former Minister of the Interior, takes the opportunity to «complain» in the courtroom where he has been summoned as a witness that during his 16-year career in the Political Bureau he had been abroad only once and had received a daily allowance of 14 dollars, whereas today’s officials travel every day and receive 80 dollars a day; that his salary had been 1,600, while today’s government officials earn 6,000. That MPs today receive... and so on. R. Alia declares in court: «I was of the opinion that the Hoxha family should have been treated as a special case, while the people were served principles based on the meager life of a leader who wore socks patched as many as 10 times with a razor blade and used one umbrella for 8 years, while Ramiz himself, in December ’90, said: “I declare under my personal responsibility that there have been and are no privileges in the so-called Bloc.”» The foreign trips by plane made by ministers, officials and the president are mentioned whenever an opportunity arises, and comparisons are made with trips taken in the past. But no one says that today’s trips are work trips, not vacations; that they are public trips, not secret ones. No one says that in the past the leaders’ lives were «arranged» by secret and highly secret decrees; no one talks about their great hypocrisy. Comparisons are made with the present. Comparisons are made between two opposing eras, when the goal is to catch up with the world (and that cannot be achieved merely by having the world come here). It is understandable and logical that today a minister, an MP or whoever it may be should have a higher salary than others; it makes no sense to talk about the absurd 1:2 wage ratio; there will be differences in standards of living. This is the law of the road we have set out on, a road that the nostalgics of the past and the victims of communist propaganda cannot divert or turn back, however strenuous their efforts may be. LUFTI DERVISHI (Continued on page 3)

Some of our politicians remain clear in their confusion. Things began to go downhill the day someone suddenly thought that the rule of law could be built without laws. It happens this way too At a meeting of the PR National Council before the May 22 elections, some former PR leaders refused to stand as candidates for parliament or even to be included on the nominal list because they expected to become ambassadors. Later, one of them began working in what had been taken from the people, while others consoled themselves with abstention. With the Democratic Alliance appearing on the scene, parties can now be legalized not only by the Ministry of Justice, but also by parliament. OBSERVATION: «The “Democratic Alliance” Party, despite having no MPs, formed a parliamentary group, whereas the PR, although it has MPs, has not yet formed a parliamentary group.» PARADOX No one (with the exception of N. Tozaj) has spoken against opening the files, and yet the files are not being opened. HOW OUR POLITICIANS DIFFER FROM FOREIGN POLITICIANS: Foreign politicians get into politics energetically after securing their economic position, whereas our politicians do the opposite. After securing their political position, they throw themselves energetically into business. TWO QUESTIONS STILL UNANSWERED During discussion of the draft law on the restitution of property, an MP in the PD parliamentary group asks: —If we take this position, what distinguishes us from the Republican Party? —Another replies: —If we take the position you propose, what distinguishes us from the PS? TWO KAMBERs AT ONE DOOR In the People’s League Party (Continued on page 3)

«Socialist Party! Socialist Party! Fatos Nano! Fatos Nano!» A mentally ill woman, N. of Tirana, shouting these slogans, crossed the entire Ministers’ Square and headed toward the parliamentary road, in the direction of the Academy of Sciences. «Socialist Party, Socialist Party! Fatos Nano, Fatos Nano! He would save Albania. The government has resigned! Now Fatos Nano will take over the government. Fatos Nano will lower the prices of sugar, bread and cheese, and rice. Fatos and his cabinet will set the price of sugar at 8 lekë. Rice too. Cheese at 17. Bread at 4 lekë. The newspaper “Zëri i Popullit” will sell for 4 lekë. Spiro Dede will be editor-in-chief! Sofokli Lazri will be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Adil Çarçani will be honorary chairman of the Council of Ministers. Fatos Nano, Fatos Nano will carry out reform in Albania. He will lower all food and clothing prices. Enough of the people living under the heel of the Democrats’ government...» The mentally ill woman, N. of Kryqëzeti, immediately turned back from parliament and headed for «Skënderbej» Square. The astonished crowd watched as the woman climbed onto the empty podium in the center of the square and continued her speech: «Today a work by Enver Hoxha is being released into circulation. The price is unbelievable, just 8 lekë. Skënder Gjoni is appointed First Secretary in Dibër. Nexhmije Hoxha will be released from prison today. The new parliament has granted her acquittal. Colin Powell has been registered as a member of the Socialist Party. Krakshtë has been expelled from the Socialist Party...» the Council of Ministers. THE CHRONICLER

THE SIGNING OF THE PETITION FOR PROPERTY CONTINUES. SIGNING TAKES PLACE AT THE BRANCHES OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE DISTRICTS.