The new Minister of Transport issues an ultimatum: Hundreds of workers and trucks are deployed in a massive paving operation A rare operation by the Head of the Executive to repair the roads of the North page 5

BY ALEKSANDËR ÇIPA While the political camps have raised their electoral calling to a new pitch, in several outlying areas of the country the precedents of clashes between the state police and people of the street are being revived. The case of the Laç Police Station, which, carried away by the optimism of the “first day of work,” found itself confronting the mass of people who unjustly suffer “the beating,” while the lumpen remain stronger than the state, constitutes another episode in the chronic confrontation between the state and the law on one side and people of the street on the other. The coincidence of politics aligning itself with people of the street whenever Albania is in an election period can now be seen as more than a coincidence: it may be regarded as a strategy. This very strategy has now been flagrantly exposed. It is favored by certain circles which, unfortunately, although often denounced by the political sides as they stake out their positions, are used effectively for political gain, but at a cost to public calm and the consolidation of the rule of law and the law in general. According to the familiar calendar of populist action, road-blocking strikes and demonstrations are expected to appear in the coming days of the campaign. The blocking of the national highway is often conspicuously threatened, to the point that hunger strikes no longer even arouse curiosity. This “democratic way,” which can naturally be called an escalation of civic protest, in Albania in reality often degenerates into anarchy and a street-level challenge to the law and the state, which unfortunately remain unable and powerless to act. In these critical instances, part of the campaign tradition, political forces demonstrate the cynicism of their political pragmatism more than any commitment to the state and its institutions. Faced with such precedents of socialization, those now in government respond with statements about the state police, yet in the case of Laç, regarding what happened that day, they do not even issue an official statement. Meanwhile, the opposition Democrats, through one of their local elected representatives, do not hesitate to declare that, in the confrontation with the people of the street, the one at fault is the police commissioner herself—the one who was taken hostage(!). Both these positions, despite their different political affiliations, compromise the civic morality of the representatives and political camps. The citizen is trampled in this instance and turned into a “talisman” for the constitutional consumption of both government and opposition. In practical reality, not only the state but also the Law become mere mechanisms misused by politics. Politics in this country has gone too far in its use of the street. Indeed, it can be said that it has continually put the street at its service, precisely through its protagonists and wretched people. In this unchanged reality, Albanians in the country have borne the sadness and suffering caused by this abuse.

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One dies at the scene, while two brothers lose their legs, hands and eyes Tragedy in Peshkopi page 6

30 thousand lekë to be fashionable At the clinic where hair color is changed page 15