Mr. Godo’s speech at the December 15 meeting with the citizens of Mat I have spoken several times in Mat, because it is an important center connecting Central Albania with the North, has historical traditions and a population full of vitality. The Republican Party insists on expanding in Mat. The good work our Branch is doing here seems insufficient. We want sub-branches in every municipality and sections in every village, so that when elections are held we can elect a Republican MP from Mat. Then we can seriously undertake the defense of the interests of local property owners and the resolution of many other problems. Today I will briefly present our views on some aspects of economic development. The government is proving unable to bring the country out of the crisis, and no convincing prospects for the future are in sight. Official figures show 300,000 unemployed. 450,000 pensioners live in poverty. A large number of former political prisoners and internees have no means of subsistence. Teachers too are struggling to live, even though they are almost the only group to have done their duty in these difficult years, and the Homeland should be grateful to them. Here in Burrel, 40% of people get their bread on credit. This is the current reality for broad sections of the population, which cannot be denied with statements that we are supposedly the country with the fastest economic growth in Europe. Even if that is true, the poverty in which the people live remains as it is. We believe that we can begin to emerge from this situation if the government acts energetically in the most urgent areas: private property must be recognized and returned, domestic production must be supported, the necessary conditions for foreign investment must be created, tourism must be opened up, and law and order must be established. No progress is being made in any of these areas; instead, people talk, waste time and wander in the fog, burdening the people and keeping poverty unchanged. As for private property, we have by now made up our minds that this Government and this Parliament will keep the communist law on land in force, while the return of urban properties has been sunk into a quagmire of bureaucracy and corruption, from which they cannot emerge without dissolving the privatization boards. They find this difficult to do because the ruling party’s officials, their relatives and their associates have themselves become entangled with these bands of thieves. This also includes division and privatization through the continuation of unemployment, an increase in imports and a decrease in exports, and a growing foreign debt, which will be a yoke around our necks and those of future generations. But how is production kept blocked? A small snag can stop a large machine. The economy—through foreign aid, about which the Government has never clearly told the people where it has gone. At the very least, it should have been used for water and electricity, which in Tirana are almost as bad as in Sarajevo. Apparently, we will continue digging holes and selling cigarettes. Sabri Godo, chairman of the PRSH, attends After the meeting with the citizens of the Mat district, Mr. Sabri Godo and Neritan Alibali took part in a meeting of the PR Mat District Council. The meeting was opened by the branch chairman, Agron Elezi, who reported on the problems that had arisen for the PR in the district after the referendum. He and the other speakers noted that 150 new members had joined between August and December. The branch council has steadily raised the level of its work, but the central office needs to send brochures containing the party’s statute and program. The distribution of the newspaper Republika in the different areas of the district also needs to be better organized. The meeting emphasized that the Republican land law had been implemented in Lac, Bruc and Urakë. At the end, Mr. Sabri Godo took the floor. “Republika” correspondent egori who has done his duty in these years cannot leave without clearing out the privatization boards, something they will find difficult to do, because the officials of the ruling party themselves, their relatives and their associates have become entangled with these boards of thieves. This also includes the allocation and privatization of state assets, farms, factories and other construction works built through the collective toil of the people. Government delegations go as far as Argentina to learn about privatization. This is a mockery. How can they learn about privatization from Argentina, which has never been communist? In no capitalist country has private property been confiscated and everything collectivized, right down to backyard chickens, as happened here. We can carry out privatization only by consulting our own economists here and through laws passed by Parliament, not by roaming around the other side of the world. Nor can we copy the former communist countries of the East point for point, because the anti-Stalinist turn that people themselves initiated in those countries left Albania untouched. The national economy, its backbone, remains blocked and continues to decline. This is shown by the fact that during the first nine months of this year, imports of goods fell by 44% compared with the first nine months of last year. The lack of domestic production will threaten to plunge us into the quagmire of bureaucracy and corruption, increase exports, and add to the external debt, which will be a yoke on machine. A few days ago, economist Aristotel Pano wrote that Albania’s flour mills cannot operate as long as customs duties are the same for flour as for wheat. And there is no point in privatizing a workshop or factory if you cannot find reasonable credit to get it running. Finally, even if you manage to do something, the state takes the life out of you with taxes and duties. Why is such a policy being pursued toward domestic production? We have been asking these questions for a long time, but have never received an answer from the government, which is so arrogant that it doesn’t care about citizens’ questions—or perhaps it doesn’t know how to answer. So we are left to offer an explanation ourselves: the government is incapable of seeing where the real problem lies. But there may be another, much more serious reason: various state officials may be in league with foreign merchants who want to see Albania as a beautiful place to sell in, but one where there will be nothing for us to buy. This means that we will continue to eke out a little living only through the hard-earned money sent by emigrants and foreign aid, about which the government has never properly told the people where it has gone. At least it could have been used for water and grain, which in Tirana we are almost as short of as in Sarajevo. It seems we will continue opening little kiosks and selling cigarettes to one another. It seems we will continue buying water for 500 lek a bottle from Macedonia, Greece and Italy, even though we could bottle and sell the water from our own springs that flow into the sea. No country in the world treats itself this way; no one can understand such things, and no state can remain standing like this.

Macedonia The solemn act of founding the University was proclaimed The proclamation was preceded by the solemn act in the early hours of the morning. Police have arrested seven people. Tetovë, December 17 — Because of the concentration of large police forces, the solemn act of founding the University of Tetovë took place today in the early hours of the morning, and not as announced. The chairman of the Council for the Founding of the Albanian University in Tetovë, Dr. Fadil Sulejmani, at the headquarters of the Party of Democratic Prosperity, in the presence of the chairmen of several political parties, members of the Founding Council, Albanian MPs in the Parliament of Macedonia, the mayors of Tetovë, Gostivar and Dibër, as well as representatives of associations, presented the decision to establish the University in the Albanian language. It contains 12 articles and includes all the legitimate provisions for the operation of an institution of higher education for teaching and study in the Albanian language. Precisely at 12 o’clock, as announced several days earlier, the solemn founding act was proclaimed in front of the Municipal Assembly, which had been cordoned off by the police, in the presence of a large number of citizens and guests from many Albanian cities. Leaders of the Democratic People’s Party were also seen at the scene, followed by the leadership of the banned PPD, the chairman of the Party of National Unity and many others, who were greeted with prolonged applause. In their vehicle, the KSB officials stationed in Macedonia merely drove past in front of the police cordon. Arbën Xhaferi told the assembled crowd, which greeted him with cheers: “May the University and Albanian culture be blessed.” Nevzat Halili, among other things, said: “The people’s will cannot be suppressed; the University is already a reality. Gligorovi had a chance to convince the world that he is a democrat, but he lost it.” Meanwhile, police special units arrived, around 200 officers, but at that moment the assembled crowd dispersed. In the afternoon, a press conference with journalists from various newsrooms was held at the headquarters of the banned PPD. It is learned that the police arrested last night the members of the Founding Council, Dr. Murtezan Ismaili and Dr. Agni Dika, etc. [text cut off]

Durrës: During a visit to the city of Durrës, when asked by an ATSH journalist about European Community investments in this district, the EC Ambassador to Albania, Elio Germano, stated that an agreement with the Albanian government had now been finalized to begin reconstruction of the Durrës–Rrogozhinë road. Work to reconstruct this road, which is the beginning of the ambitious plan to renew the ancient Via Egnatia, will start in the middle of next year. The European Community’s investment in this undertaking amounts to 12 million ECU, and its construction will create employment opportunities for many citizens from the districts of Durrës and Kavajë. Ambassador Germano added that the study for the modernization of the port of Durrës is nearing completion; an investment of approximately 8 million ECU has been estimated for it.

Mr. Sabri Godo, chairman of the PRSH, attends Mr. Sabri Godo, accompanied by PRSH Council member Mr. Neritan Alibali and the central headquarters instructor, Mr. Pirro Kostallari, attended the expanded PR meeting for Dibër on December 16, 1994, in the District Council hall. The opening remarks were delivered by the Branch chairman, Mr. Dyrmish Shehu, who spoke about the political situation of the PR branch in Dibër after leaving the governing coalition. Mr. Sabri Godo then took the floor and also answered participants’ questions. There was extensive discussion among PR members in the district. From Mr. Sabri Godo’s speech: The political situation in Albania, Mr. Godo said, is almost at a standstill. The PS is no longer forcefully insisting either on Fatos Nano’s term limit or on new elections. This is a secret strategy, carefully thought out by the socialists, from whom one should expect anything. If the socialists were to win in Bulgaria, the Balkans would risk turning red, Mr. Godo went on to say. Therefore, the forces of the democratic camp must act with greater caution and wisdom. Sabri Godo pointed out that we are making a mockery of the round tables of the parties and the roundtable itself. Each party is using them for its own political purposes. As for the constitution, Mr. Godo stressed that we support it so that the country can have a constitution. Its absence allows people with personal or group agendas to use the state in their own interests. The President’s personal propaganda, the PD’s errors in government, the corruption that has spread through all state structures, and the lack of law and order led the people to say no to the constitution in the referendum. We warned the PD in good time about its tendencies to lead (continues on page 3)

The Right Front will be made by the right-wingers Albania must be taken as it is. This Albania emerging from communism, with these people, with these mentalities. So much mud has been thrown at the traditional Albanian Right that it will still take a long time to restore the true Albanian Right to its dignity. For the Albanian Right, what it is and what it has been, and why Albania needs it today, is altogether too much. No one wants it. The Right is Albanian nationalism; the Right is what stands for Albanians. The Right is that which upholds the history of its nation and the interests of Albania. Communism threw mud at the Right, at the political beauty of the Albanian Right, because it understood that it was an opponent and could not agree with the compromises made by communism in the name of internationalism, which clashed fiercely with Albanian nationalism. It was natural that Enver Hoxha’s aim was the destruction of Albanian nationalism and of the nation’s Great Families, which over time had made the history of Albania a reality. Not only through property, but also through their national contribution: it was natural that these Great Families should have an interest in Albania and should be in a position to guide it. The Homeland, undoubtedly, has shown much more… [The source text is garbled and repetitive here.] It was in agreement made the history of Albania a reality. Not only because of their property, but also because of should have an interest in Albania and be in a position to guide it. The Homeland has undoubtedly shown its own worth, and much more, through the occupier, even through the occupier’s collaborators, even when these “collaborating” families were destroyed; yet the ever-present accusation remained—“the ever-present accusation”—that it was precisely these classes that “collaborated with the enemy,” and the regime forcibly placed them among the “enemies of the people”! The true Albanian Right has no connection or association with collaborationists and collaborators of the occupier, even when the collaboration was with the occupier, even when the occupier’s ideology was involved, and even when collaboration was compelled by the anti-communist policies of the pan-Slavic communists. The Albanian Right is inseparable from the fate of the Albanian Nation and from the uninterrupted struggle for the real unification of one part of it in Kosovo. The present-day Homeland, whatever its circumstances, inherited this legacy that deserves serious discussion, especially when even occupiers, such as the Italian or German, were more favorable to this national unification than the internationalist practice and theory of Albanian pan-Slavic communism, which, even after coming to power in 1944, proved anti-national. Kosovars and Çams, cruelly punished by neighboring chauvinists, not only had no hope of uniting with the land of their ancestral Homeland, but, returning alive from Serbian and Greek prisons to their (communist) Albania, ended up in Albanian prisons! It is a chilling historical fact that hundreds of thousands of Albanians were locked up by the Slav friends of Enver Hoxha, against Tito, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao Tse… FARIK MYRTAJ (continues on page 3)

Burrel, December 16 — Sadik Gjoka, from the village of German, one of the oldest people in the Mat district, died at the age of 106. According to his relatives, the deceased’s longevity was the result of spending long periods in the mountains during the summer grazing of livestock, as well as consuming dairy products and meat. It should also be said that he regularly smoked and drank around 250 g of alcoholic beverages a day. Even on the day he died, he had drunk 100 g of such beverages and died after losing consciousness. ATSH

Lezhë: National seminar on AIDS issues Lezhë, December 16 — “Of the 13,000 tests carried out in 15 districts of the country for the AIDS virus, one person tested seropositive in 1993 and 10 in 1994,” epidemiologist Jorgo Kosta stressed at a seminar organized in the city of Lezhë by the Albanian Non-Governmental Anti-AIDS Committee, supported by the International Islamic Relief Organization, Tirana office, in cooperation with the Directorate of Public Services in Lezhë. ATSH

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The madwoman N. from Tirana was seen at dawn on Saturday with a lit oil lamp in her left hand. “The lack of lights is not the government’s revenge for the referendum results,” she said, raising the lamp high. Darkness is the best means of prolonging populism. With their eyes closed, people think more, while officials find it easier to do their jobs. It is one of the rare cases in which both sides benefit. The Adriatic Sea is to be privatized, while the Ionian Sea has found an owner. In the distribution of the lakes, the State Audit Office found irregularities in the procedures. The DP, through the privatization boards, gave its members the best parts of the lakes and inland rivers. Soon the first volume of the book “Theory and Practice of Corruption” will come off the press and go into circulation. The examples are taken from our ethnic projects. I have decided to lay all my cards on the table. I have nothing to lose. Let the others lay theirs down... I have guaranteed a politician that he will become president. If not president of the state, I will make him president of a company. Greta has always wanted what was best for Albania, but most Albanians still haven’t understood this. The one who loves you is the one who points out your problems. Our politicians in power don’t know how to do politics. Politics is the art of compromise and concession. Greece isn’t asking for anything huge: half of Albania. Now I’m quoting myself. As I said in one of my recent chronicles, doomsday lasts three days. After three days I’ll lay all my cards on the table. You can turn an article by a concerned and independent journalist into a poem, even an epic poem; if you put them all together, you can even make an epic. Well, my lamp is full now. I filled it with vegetable oil, because oil has become the talk of the town. THE CHRONICLER