The election campaign in the DP has now begun, a campaign that prepares for the meeting of the second National Congress of the DPA, on 4–5 December of this year. Under the leadership of the DP Chairman, Mr. Eduard Selami, meetings of the working groups and governing councils of the branches have been held in Tirana, Shkodër and Korçë. Such meetings have also been held in other branches of the Party. Let us convey some of the ideas and views expressed at the above meetings. The election campaign in the party is taking place at an important moment in the development of democratic processes in Albania. From this perspective, the Congress of the Party that governs and commands a parliamentary majority has particular importance. It extends beyond the party framework, into a national framework. Conscious of this fact, the DPA seeks and strives to analyse its achievements and the work accomplished, and to look realistically within itself. This must be encouraged. In terms of timing, it is hard to imagine a more appropriate moment. There are other opportunities to assess progress and repair shortcomings. The leaders who emerge from these elections, and the structures and their functioning, will also face the 1996 parliamentary election campaign. Convinced that the democratic alternative is decisive for the nation’s progress, the importance of the work begun grows. The DP programme is of particular importance. A proven programme, a programme that has inspired trust and belief in the ideals of December ’90 and March ’92. If something today is moving slowly and not as it should, the difficulty lies in putting it into practice. It is not difficult to bring closer those who are with you in heart and mind, those who know and want to see things realistically, those who appreciate improvements in their situation. Democracy functions through political and cultural parties and associations. Joining them and contributing to them is an obligation for our shared future and for each individual’s future. Another objective is how to bring in and draw on the views of intellectuals and specialists in various fields. Their views must shape, guide and provide constructive opposition to the reform and its progress. Sections must function on a professional basis. This does not mean organising them within institutions and enterprises. These sections are intended for intellectuals and specialists in a particular field across a district. We must all return to the DP. This principle implies the serious engagement of all its members, from the section level up to its representatives at every level. In relations between the DP, the Government and Parliament, the party is of primary importance. If the DP were to lose, bearing in mind its opposition and its so-called socialist leadership, which is destructive in essence, it would only be a matter of time before the achievements were lost and the progress of democratic processes halted. A structured, organised DP that functions in reality is the guarantee of the future. The campaign calls for cooperation among all: MPs, central and local government officials, and DP members. Cooperation that must continue and be reflected in the composition of the governing councils that will emerge. Organisationally, the campaign aims to consolidate the section, the party’s basic organisational unit. Party leaders should be actively present at the elections of every section. Questions such as these: how often has the section met, how many new members have joined, what issues have been discussed, what proportion are intellectuals, what is the level of the section leaders, and so on, are at the heart of the analysis carried out so far. Ultimately, far removed from the false notions of first and second class, “biographies,” sectarianism and appearances, and with the desire to bring in the best people and find the best solutions, this section election campaign must be conceived accordingly. Sections based on professionalism and on geographical areas do not exclude one another. On the contrary, experience shows that dual participation is successful. The importance given to the sections is reflected in the campaign being conceived in two stages: a) in sections, b) at branch conferences. After the Congress, work in groups of sections may need to be perfected. Participation at the conference, alongside the section chairpersons, includes the members involved and one representative for every 25 party members. This will ensure a true picture of the party’s reach in the city and the countryside. Last but not least in importance is propaganda work. I think it should be unified in essence and focus on the fundamental aspects of implementing the DP programme, its achievements and the changes accomplished. This will undoubtedly be accompanied by new memberships and will foster in current members a sense of pride in being members of the DPA. the structures for the functioning and parliamentary elections of the year in and the campaign for the parliamentary elections of 1996. progress, the importance of working together is clear. The DP’s program is of particular importance. A proven program, a program that has created trust and conviction today, somewhere, something is moving slowly and not as it should, the cause must be sought precisely in the failure to rigorously implement some point of this program. That is why this program will guide the DP and its representatives in the next two years as well. The DP is a centre-right party. The far left’s game of identifying the Albanian Democratic Party with the far right in its propaganda is dangerous, but easy to see through. The aim: to lose voters. Since its establishment, the ADP has been, and will remain, a centre-right party. Its program places it here; this is its conviction about what is best for the country. Alongside the program, importance attaches to the human potential that will support and implement it. Political, administrative, economic, psychological, social, legal and military reform has now passed its difficult phase. The break with the past has been clearly delineated. Foreign and domestic sociologists and political analysts, as well as lived reality, testify that today we are better off and there is more light. Most Albanians live better. Albania is more open than ever to Western democracy and to various international institutions. Political support and economic assistance have not been lacking. Credit goes to the DP, its government and President Berisha. Credit goes to the entire Albanian people, and especially to Albanian democrats. Taken together, these things oblige the DP’s leaders to make use of opportunities for new memberships. People who have benefited from the reform, individuals who have cast off yesterday’s scepticism, and others whom an aversion to being a party member has held back, can and should join.

President Berisha’s press conference became the target of the usual attacks by the communist press, especially «ZP». The lack of argument, patience and a view of everything through red-tinted glasses led the «ZP» analysts to publish completely unfounded and malicious statements and interpretations. This is especially clear in their interpretation of President Berisha’s statements about permanent and periodic elections. With a marked lack of culture and ignorance of the Albanian language, let alone political concepts, the anonymous «ZP» writers confuse periodic elections with permanent elections. Periodic elections are the most stable expression of a country’s democratic culture. The DP and President Berisha, from the first step of pluralism through to its institutionalisation, have remained faithful to the theory of periodic elections. The people’s will, expressed democratically on 22 March 1992, established the legitimate government for a four-year period. After four years, the legal right to a new political contest arises, which means that the theory of periodic elections has been and remains the ABC of democracy and of our democratic state. One cannot say that “permanent elections” take place periodically whenever the need for political change arises, because permanent elections cannot be periodic. Periodic elections are held by law and in accordance with the will of the Constitution every four years, whereas permanent elections, which mean elections that are ongoing and continuous, are characteristics of a country without political stability, and therefore far removed from today’s Albanian reality and the concept of periodic elections. Permanent elections are held as they were on 31 March and 22 March, because the people demanded them... and Albania had no stability at all, because the PPSH leaders did not win a legitimate vote but used violence and terror, because the communist government did not dare to seek a vote of confidence from the people for two or three months. Periodic elections, by contrast, have a four-year limit, 1992–1996, as guaranteed by the laws of every democratic state. Russia, Poland, Romania and Albania. Albania is neither Russia, nor Romania, nor Poland. The Russian parliament, or the Polish and Russian governments, etc., were destined to fail because democracy there has not yet been institutionalised, nor has the necessity of burying communism yet been understood. In Russia, the communist parliament obstructed reforms and attacked the president until it organised a coup d’état. The reality in Albania, however, is different. The most recent test in the villages of Dibër showed that the DP and its vote of confidence enjoy massive popular support. The democratic government has remained faithful to economic reform and is successfully pursuing economic integration with Europe. The Albanian Parliament politically and legally expresses the will of the people and enjoys its absolute support. The Albanian president is highly respected by the citizens of his country and has become a symbol of national unity, justice and honesty. Therefore, not only are allusions to parallels with unstable Eastern countries laughable, but the Socialist Party’s statements that “early elections here are wanted only by the DP and the president” appear even more banal and false. In reality, they are not wanted by the electorate of the quasi-legitimate democratic mandate of 22 March—that is, 70 per cent of the population—or by some of the socialists’ representatives, who opposed the boycott of local government and Parliament and boycotted the PS’s shameful rallies around Albania. They were demanded by F. Nano, accused of violating legal and moral laws, and by his corrupt and criminal clique. The DP and the president, with the legitimacy bestowed by the people, are working to carry out their four-year electoral programme while respecting the basic norms and concepts of democracy: the vote and the law. In this sense, the president did not set the election date; he respected the law and cited it, respected the nation and cited it. The vocabulary of the communist [?] can do anything. Just as it spun terror and demagoguery for 50 years, so today it continues its mission, which is neither democratic, nor humane, nor national. A. KRASNIOI

On 15–16 October 1993, the 4th International Conference on Security and Cooperation was held in Antalya, Turkey. It was organised by the Turkish Atlantic Association. The attendance of the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, Cindoruk; Deputy Prime Minister Karajaloin; the Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Army, Gyrosh; and others, as well as NATO Secretary General Verner, Secretary General of Western European Cooperation Van Ekelën, former Austrian President Valdhajm, and others, clearly demonstrates the importance of the event. Our country was represented at this meeting by Deputy Foreign Minister Arjan Starova and Albania’s ambassador to Turkey, Skënder Shkupi. The central focus of the conference was the discussion of the challenges facing the continent after the end of the Cold War, and particularly regional conflicts. In this context, the conflict in former Yugoslavia and the issue of Kosovo were given priority. The remarks of NATO Secretary General Manfred Vërner are worth noting. Among other things, with regard to Kosovo, he emphasised: “If we do not demonstrate our determination to use force in Kosovo to prevent a possible ethnic cleansing there, then we will have another conflict there. Thus, even now the strength of the International Community must be demonstrated, because later it will be of no use.”

About 5,000 art, medical and library-services books arrived in recent days at Tirana’s Library No. 5. They came from Marseille as part of the now familiar initiative, “One Marseillais—one book for Albania,” and the ongoing twinning ties between the French city and the Albanian capital. (Continued on page 6)

When the killings at the border and July ’90 were still echoing with the last groans and gasps of the dictatorship through the Albanian landscape, raped by it for 50 years, in Shkodër—so bloodied by it—2 April would come as one final bite from the dictatorship’s macabre instinct, wounding the dignity of the ideals of December. At that time we demanded justice. We demanded that the criminals be put in the dock. Our idealism and our pure, naïve spirit urgently demanded justice. But justice still remained in the weapons and hands of those who had not yet managed to wipe the fragments of our still-uncoagulated blood and our torn wounds from their faces, trouser cuffs and shoe soles. Criminals could not judge themselves. And so this paradox persisted alongside our naïveté until 22 March 1992... And now democracy truly is understanding and consensus, but when you are the deputy minister of the Interior, today, you are accused not only by history but, above all, by your former victims who are still alive. The testimony of those who experienced the horrific and sadistic truths at the Qafë e Barit extermination labour camp on 22 May 1984 is harrowing: Zylftar Ramizi, who had arrived especially by helicopter at the head of a special unit of sympathisers, would carry out a classic massacre: two people executed by firing squad, one dead from lynching, 45 people maimed and crippled, 25 people sentenced to as much as 25 years in prison; others—45 people disabled and kept under torture for 35 days in isolation cells—and prisoners who were likewise forced through torture to confess to fabricated crimes. It is precisely this Zylftar Ramizi, who as deputy minister bears responsibility for the killings at the border in ’89–’90, etc., whose trial will place him in the dock. - Zylftar Ramizi and, beside him, Rrapi Mino—the men categorised among those who built their careers through crime, through daily genocide against the lives of others, hundreds and thousands of innocent people— - The proceedings against them are the restoration of justice desecrated under the dictatorship; they are history’s judgment, which cuts through— - They will be tried for specific crimes on the basis of testimony from their victims, people who managed to escape death in the communist camps of slow and systematic human extermination— Now justice has the chance to act not with the “tampon” of revenge and [?], but with the sword of cold truth, with the judgment of a history that does not forget. That is why we live in a human world, not a [?] one, where morality and moral right are the norm of existence. Zylftar Ramizi, who until July ’90 held the position of deputy minister of the Interior, is today accused not only by history but, above all, by his to confess to fabricated crimes.

The Democratic Party, remaining faithful to its line of open, pluralist thought, has always respected the independent identity of the individual and of party groups within it. In this particular case, the DP has always made room for a constructive spirit, never allowing opinions to be frozen, uniform submission to directives, or blind obedience. The very emergence within the DP’s ranks of the group that was later called the most modern group, the «monocionist» group, showed at the time that the DP would not deviate from its European-oriented program, based on the principles of respect for established norms of dialogue and political competition within the party itself. The departure of the «monocionists», which was seen by many as a freezing of the DP, a victory for the larger faction, or a gulf that would close off debate beyond the Party’s official boundaries, was a misinterpretation, since the DP group had put forward its ideas outside the DP’s program. Within these two groups, there was only one faction that accepted the DP’s program and kept within its basic agreement; in this way, it had brought about its separation from the DP. Events that followed, and especially recent developments, have shown precisely that the DP remains an open, democratic and European party. This spirit of pluralism has also flourished within the DP parliamentary group. The contributions of Baleta, Hajdari, Butka and Marku have always stood out here, bringing a broad democratic culture to the life of the DP. This has shown that the Democratic Party has no intention of suppressing free democratic thought, but of cultivating it within the recognised norms of pluralism in a party. This further advances the idea that the DP remains the most open party, one that respects free thought within its ranks, and that it is the only party on today’s political scene to have taken action regarding its MPs, even to the point of lifting their immunity, so as to allow justice to fully investigate their abuses. The DP has likewise responded to its own mistakes, remaining the only political force that admits it has made mistakes and accepts that something in its work needs to be corrected. As an example, we can cite the Katalaku case: he resigned over his emotional retort in Parliament in a completely spectacular and democratic manner, giving himself and the Democratic Party room to understand that it was indeed something that had nothing to do either with his convictions or with the DP’s program. This is a new experience that the DP has introduced in the field of political relations; nevertheless, various political forces continue to accuse the DP of being a centralised party, etc. When, in fact, these parties cannot provide even a single piece of evidence that they accept either pluralism or moderation within their own ranks. The DP has a deeply rooted predisposition towards free thought and democratic freedom as two enduring and democratic factors.