President Berisha tells the foreign press that he will crush the Salvation Committees by force before 29 June. He commits himself to violent elections Military aircraft fly over Gjirokastër. Bullets in the sky. The “special units” return from the South

The events of the last two days make you suspect that Berisha, despite his “readiness,” despite the electoral leadership, and the promises of “resounding” and “historic” victory, does not want the elections to take place. This may seem unbelievable to some, but sudden, 180-degree turns have by now become commonplace in Berisha’s political life. Faced with the international community’s determination to hold elections within a very short time, after having dragged the opposing parties through the labyrinths of questionable legal procedures, and after setting a trap by passing the electoral law, he announced the election date at a time when the others had begun protesting and even threatening to boycott the elections. With an electoral law that favored him, with the parties unable to campaign, and with considerable opportunities to manipulate the process again, Berisha seemed to have calculated on at least losing with dignity, if not winning. But signals of a substantial OSCE presence and that of other institutions in the electoral process, their contribution of the infrastructure needed for the elections, and above all the presence of the multinational force near polling stations, significantly diminish the effectiveness of the weapon of election manipulation. More than this, Berisha must have been influenced by domestic factors. The few visits he has made to various areas have surely served to test the electorate. The result has been deeply disillusioning for him. A cold reception in Kavajë, the cries of “Down with Berisha” or “We want our money” and so on in Laç, the stones and gunfire in Lushnjë and Fier, and the indifference and irony of the people of Elbasan and the villagers around the capital have been enough for Berisha to understand that the so-called “silent majority” does not exist at all. Under these circumstances, Berisha has changed tactics. While he himself has begun using conciliatory terms, speaking of reformed socialists and of his opponents as responsible, on the other hand he is experimenting by “provoking,” with PD mercenaries dressed as policemen, sensitive areas where he knows he is unpopular. Meanwhile, Berisha’s press has begun to insist on the idea “that elections cannot be held under these circumstances.” Apparently, by provoking the southern regions, Berisha aims to create incidents to incite the enraged population to take up arms. Ideally for him, those weapons would also be turned against foreign soldiers. He knows clearly that “joking” with the people of the South will not go without consequences. Cërrik may have been Berisha’s first experiment in this direction. Keeping this in mind makes Berisha’s maneuvering with SHIK, his insistence on controlling the Ministry of the Interior, and his determination to keep Agim Shehu more understandable. Several of his statements about eliminating the southern committees by force before 29 June also make such a game more believable. In this way Berisha would force the West to believe his pretext that “elections cannot be held with guns in hand.” K.J

Police maintain order at election campaign rallies in Indonesia. Photo: Reuters

After a week of work, as always, we headed to my parents’ home in the village of Spiten, in Lezhë. As soon as I entered my native village, fellow villagers and young men told me in hushed voices: “We weren’t here when they came...” Surprised, since I did not know what had happened at my home, I asked them: “Who are they? What happened?” Then I learned that four days earlier the house where I was born had been surrounded by two “IFA” trucks packed full of SAMP officers, most of them from Tropoja, who had pointed their automatic rifles at my brother’s children. My elderly parents, shaken by the large number of armed SAMP officers, had only said to the leader of the operation: “Not even the Germans did this to us...” After that, the house was searched for weapons, even though the 50 SAMP officers from the two “IFA” trucks had taken up combat positions, as if they were facing a battalion of people rather than two elderly people and three children. The order to search the house had been given by a commander who had an armored four-wheel-drive vehicle and whom we now know well in Vlorë. His name is Sokol Mulosmani. He is the man who massacred Vlorë, the commander who killed six people in Përmet, the instigator of the opening of the united school and the arming of northerners; he is the one who will answer tomorrow for the service of military paramilitaries in Sauk. He is a colonel who travels only in an armored car filled with weapons. I forgive Berisha’s government everything! The arrests, the searches and pressure, the beatings by his thugs, even the burning of the newsroom. I will forgive only neither the bomb planted at my family’s home on 1 November 1995 nor what Sokol Mulosmani did four days ago, terrorizing my parents. Let Mulosmani from Tropoja deal with me, not with the elderly and the children.