THE MEKSI MISTAKE
Shpëtim Nazarko
After several rounds in the field of previously theoretical articles, former prime minister Meksi finally demonstrates that he had figures locked away in his safe as well. God alone knows why he decided to publish them. Perhaps he became convinced that, to settle accounts once and for all with his opponents in the field of theory, he also had to demonstrate to them the iron logic of figures. A great writer once said that there is no money in the world that can wash away your past. But like every great writer, who understands the universal core through what are called the laws of correspondence, yet in practice carries them out like a weak little boy, our writer too fails to understand that the former prime minister is using the phrase for a practical effect. “I don’t need to wash away my past, sir; I need to defend myself a little.”
A little on Meksi’s theoretical articles
There will be no similar precedent in world history to that of the Meksi government. Luftar Paja’s delicate fable about the lamb that was stolen is too little to describe the self-destructive genius of the Meksi government. Have we ever seen a government that had 100 percent of central power, 100 percent of local power, the police, the army, the banks, SHIK, the village elders, the courts and the neighborhoods in its hands, and then complained that its power had been taken by force? That means either playing the innocent angel or being utterly self-deluded. To reduce the entire opposition, with all its parties, to a 5-by-5 club called Fidel, and then start complaining—that is a farce. The opposition’s only merit in this “titanic” struggle is that its leaders read maxims all night and, in the morning, while choosing cafés, tell journalists that 20 of them will be there around February or March next year, when, with no money left in his pocket, he will be thrown out of the Fidel club, only to hand over all the keys to the government. Naturally, by then the treasury will be empty.
The reason for showing mercy to the people was that all the scoundrels of the opposition and the opposition had dipped their fingers into this endless muck. The best proof of this hypothesis is the summons and presence of the key figure in the entire story of the last five years of the Albanian state. This man, who knows the poetry of figures and ima banati in America better than anyone else, is called Kristaq Luniku. The Xgjela Commission does not need to go up and down and waste any more of its government’s remaining money in this case. But there is a more convenient way to prove the above hypothesis. With the genius that characterized the Meksi government—a genius that turned Albania into an endless country of kiosks—we can reach a conclusion with the help of this same genius, namely Meksi’s, and understand the truth of the saying that “bulmezi finds the road to ruin by itself.”
Meksi himself provides the key to the solution in his attempt to defend himself through practical-type articles.
On practical articles
On May 10, 1998, Meksi wrote in the press that his government handed the succeeding government 100 million dollars in February ’97. “The idiots,” he says, “must understand that it was not 1.2 billion dollars that was lost, but around 550 or 600 million dollars.” If Meksi had been allowed to govern, what would he have done at the table with these 100 million? Would he have used the method he used with the foundations? Where would the 400 or 500 million he himself talks about have come from? If the companies had not given this 500 million to the people, where would the government have found it? Or does Meksi think that the theory “we found this much, we handed out this much” would have saved him?
Meksi may tell Albanians that some money was lost through “second-tier bathrooms,” by turning it into bonds and papers of all kinds of colors. But in any case, we would have been left in a tight spot, since the papers were more orderly. The physical money was not there. In the end, Meksi himself tells us this. Dear Prime Minister, you fail to understand that perhaps the IMF’s murderous letter in October 1996, and the catastrophe that closed in during February–March 1997, when roughly as much interest as principal should have been distributed, began with the operation to liquidate Sude. It was the only way for the Meksi government to save all the big people who had put their money into Sude. The rest was attempted to be resolved through the Xhaferr and Popull operation, where the money was distributed to citizens. In other words, two methods were calculated, taking into account the losses caused by inflation and the delay in withdrawing the funds’ value.
The Meksi government had no time to approach the big companies with a method more elegant than the Sude and Xhaferr Popull one because, if we imagine the table, “the people’s bear raised its hat” before it had a chance to experience the government’s new technique for distributing money. Meanwhile, all those “competent” people who had this right in front of their eyes, the opposition and the [unclear] in the country, would take out the account book and everything, put it in some corner, and shout “hooray” with everyone in the squares. And they still bear the stigma of the revolution, which, after all, lets us enjoy for a while longer the wonderful jokes and articles about Aleksandër Meksi.
Not being in the right frame of mind, before the rules of the game with two castles, which [unclear] to [unclear] two [unclear], I imagined what I might have done with Aleksandër Meksi if he had remained prime minister. Surely, the most normal course would have been this: someone would give him a kick from behind, and the head of the prime minister’s office, without a conscience, would continue taking even more.
the entire opposition, with all its parties, into a 5-a-side club called Fidel, and then to start complaining—that’s a [llaf]. its leaders read Maksimum all night and, in the morning, over coffee, presented 20-year-old newspaper clippings as revelations about those times. This is truly an astonishing conclusion. Even Marquez, with “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” would never have imagined that such a fantasy could be reality in Albania.
While examining the history of 1996, there was a moment when I was seized with horror, even though “Dita,” which I was directing, was the only newspaper that had fought the pyramid schemes most ruthlessly. This was the moment when Sudja, following the operation by international experts to make it independent at a terrifying figure. Twenty days later, it declared bankruptcy. Not only for Prime Minister Meksi, but even for a fool with three years of schooling, it was perfectly clear, at least one day after the bankruptcy was declared, that the operation to empty Sudja’s safe, which regularly deposited its money in the bank, had begun 20 days earlier. The geniuses who commanded the operation demanded the money. They doubled Sudja’s share, replenishing the safe once again, using the latest method. Do you remember, then Prime Minister, that even a child—the very youngest in the neighborhood—should have been able to grasp this simple operation? Pensioners may remember this story better. The reason Meksi and the others—and this includes today’s political class—dare not analyze the phenomenon is that both sides have sunk, with monstrous greed, into a shared game that deserves the last rites of every living newspaper. In fact, the entire Ngjela Commission, which is trying to distort the history of March, does nothing but deceive itself. It deals with the consequences, not the cause. Naturally, in March 1997 both sides delicately avoid the issues, because they know well which way the political class’s victory is leaning, amid the revolutionary fever of rallies. In October 1996, I told opposition politicians that the state had declared [unclear], and that the only thing they needed to show the people was how to manage this victory over their political opponents. Meksi