Bank auction begins
The Albanian Government, in a confidential letter, orders the sale of the Agrare Commercial Bank
The first bank will be sold within three weeks. Malaj: "Deposits and employees guaranteed"
The first bank will be sold within three weeks. Malaj: “Deposits and employees guaranteed”
The nation’s misery
By Fatos Lubonja
From the Albanian opposition press of yesterday, which was enthusiastically embracing the "VAT privatization of the government of the people of the "economic grandees", "the nationalization of the military top brass with the national police". Presented like this, in a word, whether for the state or for the individual, it is hard to tell where good leans and where evil leans. Nevertheless, they evoke the image of Pushkin’s The Superior’s tale, according to which good is always on the side of the state against the individual. If we are inclined to connect our announcement with this tale, then we will think that what has stood before us is not the devil in the form of the "state", but the devil in the form of the "Albanian" and his degradation. Yes, because in order to clearly name the situation Albanian society is going through, we are forced to state that the problem is not at all the Albanian split, "which has become more acute", but rather the heavy division that is making Albanians in our country stubbornly oppose the "state and the Albanian".
Since the problem is how to bring forth an honest Albanian, it is equally important to ask and trace what sort of Albanian man it is, emerging from the past of dictatorship and transition, who has brought this state to ruin. For me it is clear that this man is one who has worked out his own personal interest to the detriment of the general interest; who, unlike those who wear the label of "right" or "left", stands above both; who understands freedom only as his own interest and the violation of every law and moral code.
With a wish for goodness, which we are suffering from and which we are living through today, with a question in particular about what happened to this opposition, with which they think about the market economy and the rule of law. Rightly, the question is why such a thing should not turn bloody, in order to achieve those who take upon themselves to wear the costume of "statesmen". In public, for example, the Socialist leader, with such an interpretation of national morality, would ask: “Is it possible for people to die, and for a military commissar who does not take part in the war not to be punished?”, if indeed absurdities, once they become commonplace, turn into normality. Misery triumphs freely.
With this misery in a country trying to build Albania, it is understandable that everyone is afraid. Nevertheless, fear must not make us blind. History does not begin today with the opposition, with the movement and with the socialist government; on the contrary, it has its origin in that resentment and maliciousness of the governments’ thinking in previous years, where it was learned that freedom is not responsibility, but the seizure of the state.
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American Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Malley yesterday in Tirana