Bring the Hajdari Case to light P. 2

The Summit’s projects are partial and do not include economic development P. 3

More than 100 million dollars are legalized through him P. 3

P. 5

By Teodor KEKO The wife of a friend of mine, when she grew very old, became confused, and one day said: —This year I turned 90, next year I’ll turn 89, so I don’t worry about it at all...! This story was brought to mind by the recent event in Brussels, where Albania’s friends recommended to our government officials that they return properties to their owners, while our people talk about a recommendation that there were some irregularities in the allocation of property. But [?] it has never deigned, during these eight years of pluralism, to seriously discuss the issue of returning property even once. Much has been said in the name of the working class, which has been enslaved for these 50 years under dictatorship and which also deserves property, but there has never been a referendum with these people to ask them what they think about the return of property. Our dominant politics, sometimes blue and sometimes pink, has always been red on this issue, with the agrarian reforms it has carried out and continues to carry out. And it has committed all this perversity for petty interests, so as not to lose the electorate! This is not only dishonest, but it is utopian to think that you have secured a solid electorate which, in essence, would sell you for a morsel, just as it sold out the PD in 1997! Today we need to take small but sure steps forward—not like that Çam dance, which is danced with one step back and two forward, toward the precipice, when people do not want to fall alive into the enemy’s hands. We must dance a dance that takes us only forward, onto safe ground, and that begins by creating this ground: returning private property to its lawful owner! The time has come to abandon the Enverist mentality, which equated the beu with the raya, and to look reality in the eye! We must share the pain, but let us make sacrifices in the name of our children’s happiness tomorrow; otherwise, we were born ragged and ragged we will die, along with the generations we leave behind! This is the dilemma of today’s politicians! Let’s see what alternative they will serve up to us, but if they decide to leave us ragged, let us not obey! Let us show them democratically that we are capable of sending these half-senile pensioners into retirement This story reminds me of the latest thing that properties be returned saying that there had been some irregularities in the division of properties! One with the hammer and one with the stake, as they say! All of Albanian politics, which laments the fate of the homeland, shouts about pacts on law and order, draws up strategies for future development and comes out swinging over these matters, is beating water in a mortar, because it has never dared to acknowledge that everything in this country is going wrong solely because the alpha and the omega of the problem has not been resolved: returning property to its lawful owner! The return of property may cause some pain, but this act contains the great national healing. Failure to return property brings serious social consequences, which only help to further ruin the country. Failure to return property instills in Albanians the idea that they are not owners and a lack of respect for private property, pushing them toward the destructive instinct of damaging someone else’s property whenever they get the chance. Failure to return property has not only markedly held back investment by foreign and domestic capital in Albania, but has also permanently fostered crime and corruption in Albania. However hard you try to get rid of these problems, unless you carry out a serious socio-economic analysis of Albania, it will turn out that the only thing not working in this machine is the engine—which is the problem of private property! Albanian politics cannot be said to have any morals when

P. 5 Lawyer Nafis speaks

The opposition excluded from the projects The Sarajevo Summit, which precedes the Stability Pact for the Balkans, is an important event signaling that separate regional policies are becoming international policy, in order to create a genuine, comprehensive and real community. The crisis in the countries of the Balkans is not simply an economic crisis, but also a crisis of democracy. Albania, too, is caught up in the vortex of this crisis. Therefore, the projects presented by the Albanian side should also have received the opposition’s “OK” and the opinion of independent specialists. Only realistic and unified projects can shape the future, while avoiding uncontrolled changes. Politics and demagoguery are excessive in such cases.

PRONALI