Here is how the revolt in the South will be crushed. The military plan of the Defense Council is published Page 2

. Today the Democrats will hold a difficult meeting of the National Council. This is the first meeting of this body since Albania experienced the total collapse of the state in all its structures. The National Council is meeting at a time when several thousand people have fled across the sea, several hundred others have been killed, thousands wounded and maimed, and tens of thousands of weapons seized from military depots throughout the country are killing people every day. This meeting will be held under circumstances in which the administration representing this party suffered a complete fiasco, seriously compromising the political force that delegated it as well. But that is not all. A dissenting faction has now emerged within the party, and given its current position, it seems to have no alternative but to clash fiercely with the leadership and emerge victorious by taking control of the party’s bodies, or else to be forced to leave all the same. Following the publication three weeks ago of a memorandum by 14 members of the National Council, a number of MPs and prominent figures have now joined the list of “troublemakers” in the “rebellion”; their numbers are growing steadily, and they seem set to reveal their true scale at today’s meeting. The sweeping victory of 22 March 1992 gave the DP the opportunity to act freely in implementing its economic program. For four years in a row, the president’s party did as it pleased with the national economy, the privatization platform and financial policy. During this period, the DP’s power, consolidated by the party’s complete control over parliament, determined almost single-handedly our foreign policy and institutional reform, changes in the army and reforms to the justice system. The fraudulent amplification of its earlier victory on 26 May and 20 October 1996 effectively placed all power in the DP’s hands. But power means responsibility, and when the state is being destroyed from its foundations, the responsibility of the political force leading it is also grave. That responsibility becomes all the graver given that, as we said above, the DP administered all branches of power on its own. Those who steered the Albanian state so badly cannot escape responsibility. From the head of state down to the government ministers, these people, who still occupy senior ranks in the DP, are implicated in the tragedy we have been living through for a month. The calls coming from within the party to determine responsibility and remove those who caused Albania’s drama can only be welcomed. If there is talk of a reshaping of the entire political class of the transition, that reshaping must begin first and foremost with the removal of those who did not know how to build the state, but who, through their shortsightedness and communist militancy, brought about the worst collapse in the old and recent history of the Albanian state. Today, debate is expected to begin within the DP about acknowledging responsibility for the undeclared war that has come knocking at our door. In the past, when circumstances were not what they are today, the DP did not show that it knew how to admit its mistakes and establish accountability. Let us hope that several hundred dead and a state reduced to rubble will be sufficient reason for the hour of reason to strike in this party, rather than the hour of recklessness. If that happens, all of us will have a chance to believe that those who have led us have finally understood where they have taken us. And, of course, to change the DP’s course toward true democracy.

Yesterday afternoon, an armed group made up of two SHIK agents who took part in setting fire to the “Koha Jonë” newsroom, as well as three other civilians who had worked at police stations No. 1 and No. 2, threatened the newspaper’s director, Nikollë Lesi. They brandished their weapons and threatened: “Within a few days, we’ll blow up your home too.” Lesi duly notified the Director of Police in Tirana and police stations No. 1 and 2 of the names involved, and asked them to take measures to protect the threatened journalists.

Leka Zogu in his office in Johannesburg Photo: Reuters

Today the National Council and the MPs meet. A major confrontation is expected; the list of dissidents is growing