The Socialist Party - the only political force in Europe that did not approve the land sale and purchase laws
The top leadership of the Socialist Party, by a unanimous decision, ordered the Socialist deputies' group in parliament not to approve the laws on the sale and purchase of agricultural land and plots. After voting against the Human Rights Charter and the New Penal Code, the failure to approve the land sale and purchase laws is the most absurd, cynical, anti-Western stance ever taken by the Socialist Party.
EDITORIAL The Socialist Party - the only political force in Europe that did not approve the land sale and purchase laws The top leadership of the Socialist Party, by a unanimous decision, ordered the Socialist deputies' group in parliament not to approve the laws on the sale and purchase of agricultural land and plots. After voting against the Human Rights Charter and the New Penal Code, the failure to approve the land sale and purchase laws is the most absurd, cynical, anti-Western stance ever taken by the Socialist Party of reform and the market economy as a whole, which a political force has held in the entire history of the development of democracy and the market in Europe after the Second World War.
Opposition to the law on the sale and purchase of agricultural land is above all the determined effort of the Socialist leadership to preserve state ownership of land.
By voting against the law on the sale and purchase of agricultural land, the Socialist leadership openly emerged, just as in 1991, against the defense of the Albanian peasant’s rights over the land. They showed that, for the Socialist Party, Albanian peasants may be laborers but not owners of their own land, since it cannot be sold and cannot be bought, and therefore in practice cannot be the peasant's property.
With this position, the Albanian socialist leadership inevitably demonstrated an old-fashioned, strong determination to defend every means against private property and, consciously, property and foreigners, the first destructive force of collectivism, the peasants' property, the most varied diseases, the deepest misery.
In the name of preserving state ownership of land, the Albanian Socialists declared that the vital interests of hundreds and thousands of Albanian farmers who have voted for the PS are being ignored, proving to them that the interest of the party, not their interest, is what is protected as before and in old ways. By voting to reject the land sale and purchase law, the Albanian Socialist leadership demonstrated that it is against investments and financial loans from foreign and domestic lenders in the Albanian countryside, since land that cannot be sold or bought cannot be accepted as mortgage collateral, cannot guarantee bank credit, and is not considered real property.
One may rightly ask whether the Albanian Socialists do not think that this gives the electorate something, and in this way they choose hundreds and thousands of Albanians? Of course they vote for the PS! Of course they think about this. So why then do they rise up against the interests of the electorate?
They maintain this stance almost in complete unity and full awareness not because they are stupid, but because they think that for the PS, for the future of its program, the most irreconcilable eternal enemy is private property. That, above all, and that alone, according to Marx's teachings, is the "black devil" that must be destroyed!
The Socialist leadership is convinced that only by voting for this law can it avoid losing its vote, but if this vote were to definitively drive this electorate away from them and bind it to property and the political force that respects private property.
Preserving state ownership and returning to agricultural cooperatives - an objective of the PSSH program
In their opposing stance toward this law, the socialist idea of creating agricultural cooperatives on the Bulgarian model also played a primary role.
Whoever aims, for example, at their growth and democratization? In truth, it would be absurd and unrealistic to think otherwise. The Albanian Socialists will want state ownership of land with the goal of creating agricultural cooperatives. This is even more convincing if we take the Bulgarian example into account. Socialists in Bulgaria, who are setting up agricultural cooperatives, are today led by a contemporary of P. Malkovs, meaning they are at least five times more reformed than the Albanian Socialists, who are led by the Institute of M-L Studies and the former Albanian secret police. So the chances of returning to agricultural cooperatives are several times greater in Albania than any imaginary victory of the PS in Bulgaria or any other eastern country.
This shows not only the completely different degree of renewal of PSSH and PSB, or the Marxist principles on which Albania's PS has based its program, but also, from the stance and other documents of the PS, that they critically detail the collectivization carried out by the PPSH and Enver Hoxha, but hyper-collectivization.
By hyper-collectivization, the PS leadership does not mean agricultural cooperatives, but the violent collectivization of Albanian peasants' land and livestock; rather, they mean the final stage of this process, namely the collectivization of flocks and fields. So according to them, not the collectivization of land and livestock, but the handful of the last plots of land that remain, is the error of the PPSH and Enver Hoxha. With this hypocritical and irresponsible stance, the Socialist leadership takes upon itself the defense of agricultural cooperatives, the inhuman process of their creation, and the great violence they brought to the Albanian peasant. By condemning hyper-collectivization, that is, collectivization, which constitutes the essence of the policy of expropriation, the PS leadership clearly demonstrates that the creation of agricultural cooperatives is, beyond any doubt, the undisclosed No. 1 objective of the PSSH program.
Voting against the law on the sale and purchase of plots - a deeply anti-market and anti-citizen stance
After failing to approve the law on the sale and purchase of agricultural land, the Albanian Socialist leadership, with the same decision, also failed to approve the law on the sale and purchase of plots, a law which in all market-oriented democracies is considered a basic law in the investment package and one of the most essential conditions and among the main guarantees for investors' investments.
This uniquely socialist stance throughout post-communist Europe, however paradoxical it may seem, best expresses the true essence of the PS platform, which has repeatedly taken positions for which not even Zhirinovsky in Russia could be a match. But what are the reasons that pushed the Albanian Socialist leadership to adopt such a stance and what lies behind it?
First, by failing to approve the law on the sale and purchase of plots, the Socialist leadership not only adopted an openly anti-market stance, but in this case it also openly comes out against investments and the overall investment drive of foreign capital in the country.
Second, through their stance against the sale and purchase of plots, the Albanian Socialist leadership demonstrated that politically it is not free from xenophobia (fear of foreigners), this hated principle on the basis of which, for half a century, Albania remained the only country in Europe where no foreign investment was allowed. These are proof of high sincerity and are regarded as national enslavement.
Third, the stance of the Albanian Socialist leadership toward the law on the sale and purchase of land is not only an expression of their xenophobic instinct; it is also an expression of their anti-reform and anti-PD stance. With this stance, they want to tell foreigners: do not invest in Albania, do not buy plots, because tomorrow, in the event of an imaginary victory of the PS, this party will not recognize any lawful act concerning plot ownership, since it has openly and publicly declared that it will change the laws with which it disagreed. The Socialist leadership is clear that in the next elections PSSH faces complete defeat, but by adopting this stance it thinks that at least until spring 1996 it will frighten and discourage foreign investors.
To vote and adopt such a stance means not only to act against your narrow political interests and to exploit and deepen the 50 years of poverty you have planted; it means being a fierce enemy of reform, of the market, and of the country's prosperity.
To rise up against foreign investment in Albania, in a country reserved for investment and among the poorest in Europe, shows that in the name of a short-sighted party policy you are ready to sacrifice not only the values of the market and democracy but also the creation of new jobs, the employment of the unemployed, the rise in living standards, the country's development, and its integration into the European economy.
With these anti-democratic, anti-reform positions, contrary to the most vital interests of the electorate and Albanian citizens, regardless of party beliefs, and opposed to democracy and its values as well as to Albania and Albanians as a whole, the PS proves once again that it remains a worthy continuation of the PPSH under a new name, that is, a ghost and relic of the past on the Albanian political scene.