Gjinushi: “Either Apostoli, or we leave the coalition” Page 3 PSD chairman, Speaker of Parliament and coalition member Skënder Gjinushi

BY ENTON ABILEKAJ Even patience has its limits. Albania cannot remain without a government for the sake of a few small parties. There are only three of them and together they do not even make up [an unclear percentage] of the Albanian votes cast on 29 June, yet they are wrecking every compromise offered by any prime minister willing to take it on. With insatiable hunger, they have rushed at the fattest portfolios and will not let go, while, once again, the country’s poorest government in Europe will be forced to return to elections. But this seems utterly unimportant to the coalition government’s Lilliputian parties. Yesterday, last night, and still today, they have been busy with the filled or empty portfolio of some mediocre minister, or with some unemployed person left at the party’s open doors. For his part, President Meidani, the man who in theory should intervene to put an end to this greed, remains indifferent and has left the country in the chaos of the Lilliputians. Meanwhile, the ever-present danger of an agreement between power and violence persists; winter is approaching, and it is not known whether there will be electricity, whether the refugees who have arrived from Kosovo will have somewhere to sleep or will be scattered wherever they can across Albania and become victims of crime, or whether the donors’ conference scheduled for the end of this month will take place—a conference that could give another lifeline to an economy being impoverished by all this uncertainty. PS figures have agreed to step aside to make way for the hunger of the small coalition partners, but even that does not satisfy them. They feel endangered only when the ministry being offered has very little potential to put money in their pockets. For this reason Albania is left without a government. For this reason, the leaders of the 2 percent enter prime ministers’ offices ingratiating themselves and leave cursing. They fail to understand that this is directing everyone who hopes to live normally, because that is not what they are thinking about. They are thinking about “the interests of clan and personal gain at the expense of the interests of the Homeland.” This is evidence of a course that brought them into government and was then abandoned by Fatos Nano himself. Nano withdrew because they would not. And they had not the slightest regard for difference, even though the former prime minister publicly shouted at them to stop this kind of behaviour. They have chosen their own discrimination for the sake of what they can gain from power, and give it the opportunity to strip everyone down to the marrow amid the rampant poverty. This Lilliputian saga cannot but lead to their humiliation as a political force. Their departure from the coalition, or from politics, will concern no more than the few people waiting to get jobs thanks to the particular merit of being the last members of parties that are dying in disgrace.

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