Bible and Eggs
BY MARTIN LEKA
When opposition leader Sali Berisha used to hold daily press conferences, one of the Radio Tirana journalists, at the daily meeting to report on the work, was asked to provide the news and replied with a simple past expression on his face: “Berisha said today what he says every day.” And the editor gave two sentences on the news programme: “As every day, today too the leader of the DP held a press conference. As always, he accused the government of smuggling”... We continue with news from the World.
Now that Berisha himself has grown tired of these daily press conferences, a new “democratic” fashion is taking on an equally daily scale. The difference lies in the change of setting: from closed halls to the main street. The rallies organized by the largest opposition party start at the Democratic Party headquarters, continue in Skanderbeg Square and end with shouting in front of the Prime Minister’s Office. The ritual was repeated yesterday too. It would not be worth writing about such a daily affair either, if we were following the example cited at the beginning of this article. But we are making an exception for several reasons. These unreasonable reasons have to do with some “original” behavior by Democratic Party supporters. Not only children, many of whom are recognizable by the cigarettes they sell from boxes everywhere during the day, but also older men and women, are blowing whistles on Tirana’s central boulevard. The examples this protest backdrop brought to mind, with the protests of the former opposition in Belgrade, did not go without comment among the capital’s residents yesterday either. This may be a good opportunity for Democratic leaders not only to stop spending money on whistles, but also to gather back those that were handed out. If the Democrats accused the people of Vlora of using the tricolour, I don’t know why they should not return the favour with exactly the same resemblance. Another new feature has been the use of eggs by the protesters. Of course, in such cases they are used to humiliate someone, but no eggs were thrown either at the police or at any building. It seems that the egg-carriers were smarter than the masterminds of this protest ritual. “Long live the chicken; the egg belongs in the frying pan.” The DP’s race toward next summer’s important elections seems to have started early. Just as it seems exceedingly difficult to keep up this pace for so long with this kind of protest, which looks set to irritate the nerves of Democratic voters themselves in the opposite direction too.