Kurt Kola is dragged out of the headquarters by his hair P. 3

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Vlora is asking for bread. The Government is not giving in. Creditors become shareholders The clients of "Populli" are not showing up at the counters. They are waiting for the 90% payout

The Albanian state continues to be nervous and to allow itself to take uncontrolled actions. On the one hand it claims to protect citizens, on the other it sets up barriers to use violence. In a way, the state first pulls you in, then takes you, uses you, and lets you go so that you do not cry. The presence of many police officers, in uniform and plainclothes, injects nervousness into its own citizens. The state can offer no argument to justify the presence of the police. We all want order and calm, but provocation serves neither the citizens nor the state itself. To surround the capital, put people in lines and dictate their movements, and then declare absolute calm is nothing less than a farce. The greatest harm this state is doing to itself and to democratic processes is provocation. The state provokes when it uses false information propaganda. E rrahi TV has lost its right to civil citizenship; it plays with Albanians’ nerves when it downplays protests, reduces the figures in geometric progression, and departs from the truth. Many TV journalists should realize that they have become allergic to their Albanian readers. No argument can be made when footage shot by foreign television channels is used to illustrate Albanian demonstrations. It is very laughable when ATSH, on its teletext, takes news from the newspaper it prefers and does not report itself as a primary state information institution. This state also provokes its own citizens through inaccurate information. The state should not be provocative and nervous. Very swift scenarios are served up as if nothing were amiss. We cannot defend Kurt Kola’s amateur political movement, but as a citizen of this state, he deserves the support of his own state. The day before, the police locked up the 30-year-old former communist prisoner on the pretext that uncontrolled ... could put them at risk, while yesterday the police did not consider it their duty to protect the former PD ally from the mob. Why? We do not know what coincidence explains the readiness of television cameras at the scene. Then, how does this state manage to trap those who suffered in communist prisons? Yesterday’s punishment is no less than the provocations staged as a form of suffering, when the state set people against one another. In a democracy, such an action is immoral. Only a nervous state can act with a mentality of setting people against each other, as it did yesterday. Someone should calm this state down, since it spares no one who disobeys it. Nervousness does not suit a state that claims it will lead Albania into Democratic Europe. The opposition rubbed its hands yesterday when it saw the clash between former political prisoners.

Open letter to the Speaker of the People’s Assembly, Mr. Pjetër Arbnori On February 10, Television broadcast our session up to the Prime Minister’s speech. Apparently, that was enough for those who direct television propaganda, because the broadcast was cut off and the public did not even learn how we, the deputies, received the Prime Minister’s confused request to declare a state of emergency in Vlora. I ask you to order that such banal tricks by Television not be repeated. For more, p. 3

Ismail Qemali left power of his own accord to save Albania; Hasan Prishtina isolates himself as a minister to defend the nation; Mit’hat Frashëri resigned when King Zog pardoned Shen Naumin,... Zog, too, tendered his resignation after the assassination attempt, while Minister Rauf Fico left his ministerial portfolio along with his briefcase... p. 5

Calm in the streets of Tirana Photo: A. Babani Calm in the streets of Tirana. Photo: A. Babani