The Communists Reject the Democratic Government
In his first television appearance since the Albania of the dictator, justified with the theses of the political idiot, Fatos Nano says that we socialists (read: communists) can govern better than the democrats. That alone is enough to understand that his return to Albania is no accident. Deluded by the brilliance of the power he lost, he is surely suffering above all from the craving to recover his former throne. During the time he has stayed in Italy, he seems to have forgotten that today’s Albania is not yesterday’s Albania. During this time, it seems, it has slipped his mind that today’s government is a government elected by the free vote of the citizens and not an administration appointed from the tower of the political bureau. In any case, if one genuinely analyzes what he declared yesterday about the Meksi government, it is easy to understand why even today he cannot break free from the fever of the power of his fathers.
He says that the democratic government is incapable of governing the state. And he supports this with the fact that the country is going through difficulties. Where did he discover this great truth? Did Fatos Nano perhaps imagine the transition as a walk in the park? Or is he trying to convince Albanians that after half a century of dictatorship, economic ruin, isolation, lack of freedoms and moral destruction can be erased within a few months? Such logic can be sold only by those who yesterday called misery victory, prison order, and poverty equality.
Instead of accounting for what his system left behind, Nano comes and speaks with the pose of a reform expert. He behaves as if he were not part of the apparatus that led the country to catastrophe, as if he were not the direct heir of a party that for decades suppressed, exiled, divided and humiliated. Therefore, every time he speaks of the incapacity of the democratic government, he is in fact defending an order that history itself has condemned.
If you look carefully at his statements, it is clear that he is not worried about the fate of the citizens, but about the return of communist influence to political life. That is why every criticism he makes takes the form of an ideological attack rather than a rational objection. He proposes no solutions, offers no real alternatives, accepts no responsibility; he only accuses. Because this is the old reflex of the nomenklatura: when it loses control, it tries to replace it with propaganda.
Albanians know very well the difference between a government that is trying to build democracy and those who seek to bring back the shadows of the past. The difficulties are great, but they do not rehabilitate communism. Nor do they make more credible a politician who, even when speaking with a new vocabulary, thinks in old patterns. Therefore, his television appearance should be read as an alarm signal: the communists have not abandoned the aim of profiting from every difficulty of the transition.
Citizens must remain vigilant. Democracy is defended not only with the vote, but also with memory. And the memory of this country cannot be erased by an interview or by the recycled rhetoric of former communist leaders.