Opposition: “Lift the state of emergency so we can go to the elections.” Rome, aid after the elections (Pages 2, 3, 7)

What happened on Sunday on the grounds of the Military Hospital exceeds every limit of fantasy and even the boldest imagination. Nevertheless, in Sali Berisha’s Albania nothing is impossible. Berisha himself, to highlight the atrocities of E. Hoxha’s communist hell, has repeatedly said that “Albania is a special case.” But in a way, Berisha has proved to be a prophet. Indeed, there is no other country in the world where votes are stolen as they are in Albania; nowhere else in the world is there an armed population, and no state has disintegrated as Sali Berisha’s party-state has. Sunday’s attack was not the first against the medical staff, who at this moment are more engaged than ever in a struggle against death to save people’s lives. The worst part is that the aggression, carried out with state weapons by a group of bashibozuks from the Presidential Guard, was an attack by the state against a state institution, moreover a military one. Such an event is connected to Berisha’s own character and the spirit of confrontation that he has injected into every cell of Albanian life. The fundamentalist character of his political line, combined with an exaggerated desire to remain in power at all costs and reflected in his unscrupulous war against his political opponents, lies at the root of the current chaos. Having divided the Albanian political class into different camps, and split most of the parties, including his own, it was inevitable that the turn would come to the country as well: “The South is the enemy and the North is with me,” or “one third communist and two thirds democrats.” Sunday’s act showed that now it is the state’s turn to suffer the consequences of Berisha’s divisive politics. Thus, little by little, the clashes between Berisha’s ministers and the rest of the cabinet moved onto the ground and were expressed in the most horrific way, through the use of armed force. Perhaps this “blitz” was meant to prove what Berisha’s newspaper had written: “When the socialist secretary of the Ministry of Public Order is not informed, operations do not fail, as had happened two days earlier in Cërrik.” It is not known how Berisha will explain the coincidence that, while PD mercenaries disguised as Guard recruits were attacking the Military Hospital, Berisha was rejecting Prime Minister Fino’s and the political parties’ request to lift the state of emergency. If there is no transparency in the handling of the operation at the Military Hospital, suspicions about Berisha’s role and that of his people in connection with it will deepen. At the very least, one might think that this act could be a continuation of operations intended to increase insecurity in the country, contribute to preventing the elections from being held, and go as far as testing the possibility of an armed coup against the Fino government. KJ

Defense Minister Shaqir Vukaj leaves the Military Hospital after the Presidential Guard incident Photo: Reuters

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Although the rates charged by the “Demokracia” printing house have increased, and taxes remain extremely high (most other newspapers do not pay any taxes), the Management Board of the newspaper “Koha Jonë” decided: 1—To accept reducing the profit margin to a minimum for the newspaper, but not to increase its price, so that our readers are not affected by the planned price increase. 2—To distribute, on the 2nd of each month, 25% of the profits to the journalists of “Koha Jonë”. 3—The Board of Editors is to consider the possibility of increasing the number of journalists on staff, since the newspaper must become a 32-page paper, although the volume of information is extremely large and some of it remains unpublished because the newspaper has too few pages. The Management Board will consider the possibility of keeping the newspaper’s price at 30 lekë even with 32 pages.

After Cërrik and Elbasan, another visit by Berisha is followed by an incident involving his guards. Government in emergency session: Find those responsible