From the PS heritage fund Top secret Minutes taken during the meeting of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the PPSH, comrade Enver Hoxha, with the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of People's Defense Beqir Balluku, on 15 June 1974

Interview with lawyer Spartak Ngjela

Whoever is a socialist is in danger. This is no longer a dogma, but the latest sterile recitation of the socialist leadership’s mentality. EDITORIAL “After me comes the abyss” Socialist leaders seek to drag the Socialist Party, its electorate, and all of Albania into their own ruin Whoever is a socialist is in danger. This is no longer a dogma; it is the latest sterile outburst of the socialist leadership’s mentality. Through their press, rallies, and meetings in towns and villages, they risk destroying, in the eyes of their own electorate, the myth of the irreplaceable leader. So much was overdone with love that it turned into the complete isolation of alternatives. During the victory of 22 March, the lack of substance of Nano was exploited to the point of contempt. This is a moment for coming to one’s senses. Today, when the law “On the verification of political and state figures” removes Nano from politics as well, the beloved alternative dissolves and the electorate feels boxed in, without ground and badly used. This is the natural backlash that comes after the exploitation of the spaces created by the period of transition for the left-wing extremism in the conditions of a democracy under construction. Now some of the socialist leaders feel that they are leaving. Even as they leave, they seek successors. The ideological technique of the socialist leadership at this moment recalls the words of the French monarch Louis XIV, shortly before his end: “After me comes the abyss.” It is the end of a full circle of difficulty, the level of the illusion of admiration. All along, they promoted within their party the anti-reform group, they called for fascism, and with communist jargon they cursed the reform initiatives. They reduced alternatives and squandered the entire country’s legal system. They blocked hope in the zone when they won the local elections, investments, and the implementation of reform. Step by step they sacrificed the party for the democracy that they should have worked for, and also for their own party. They excluded themselves from the successes that naturally should have belonged to them and to this party. By constantly stimulating in their own people the importance of the anti-reform candidate in the socialist leadership, they prepared the ground for the days they are passing through now. They do not prefer to leave. They try to place their bad history onto their sincere electorate, to place it onto the entire Socialist Party and, if possible, to draw all of Albania into it. There is no more ominous reason and no worse reward for a country that has at least had the chance to understand you as you are, or differently. To feel it, leaving is not a comfortable circle. But the evil is softened if departure is done normally, without continuing to create scenes in order to leave with more fuss. The anti-reform fate has been prepared by reform. Not being only rough property, it owns more than a party can own and is more sensitive than a reply, an accusation, or a vote of cards in parliament.

Violence — the present and future of the PS, as caused by it EDI PALOKA It is, on the face of it, a banal incident; a teacher (if she can be called that) at the “11 January” school, a PS member, instead of teaching knowledge, “explains” to children how socialists will behave toward the Democrats when they come to power. We will cut off the heads of Democratic teachers. That is what she declared in front of the children, and it was heard throughout the teachers’ circle as monstrous. In truth the incident is scandalous, but if one thinks that such declarations were born and that those who are now at the head of the PS spoke the same language, then this same monstrous teacher seems like Meta’s gang in the same story. A PS MP, K. Islami, declared some time ago that he would smash the skulls of all those Democrats. Primitive hysteria and hatred had already begun with the deputy chairman of the PS, Hajdaraga, who declared, in a show of sympathy for the dictatorship, that they are a crowd of “crooked ones” and that when the PS wins, he will break them again into pieces [...?] It seems that the first author is aching badly in the head and is inflaming these politicians whose past stands before their eyes and affects the future. Their cries are the climate they see while looking for monsters of the dictatorship against all those labeled “enemies” simply because they wanted to be human. These cries are proving every day that violence is not only the past of that party but also its present and, if given the chance, its future. Forced to relinquish in March 1992 a power that for 50 years they held only with blood and terror, the offspring of the dictatorship are seeing every day that only violence can bring back what they lost. Ill-trained and incapable of competing democratically, they have nothing left but to give free rein to their animal instincts. They are the same people who every day shout about the “dictatorship” of the PD, the same people who complain about the “violence” of power against the opposition, yet as soon as they are given the chance they bare their teeth. They shout about article 24/1 and then, after all, they persecute all the honest socialists employed in the state with PS cards; they declare that they will cut off the heads of their Democratic colleagues if they come to power. They complain that power prevents them from remaining, but at the first opportunity (as in Kupojë) they show that they are the “inventors” of anti-rallies and the breaking up of meetings and political opponents. They howl that the law against genocide or the law on the verification of state figures is a violation of human rights, and they do this only to defend those who have committed the most monstrous crimes. Presenting themselves as lawyers while also being authors of violence and crime, they aspire to return to power with the sole aim of sinking their claws into people’s heads. With the sole aim of destroying. But they forget that their time has run out once and for all.

No reaction to the law against genocide and the law on the verification of political figures Unlike his subordinates, whom he has set protesting in various ways over the anti-genocide law and the law on the verification of political figures, the former communist prime minister F. Nano has not reacted at all, even though he is the subject of the two laws in question. At first it was thought that Nano would not leave matters as they were by protesting against the laws that penalize the sinners of the dictatorship, but the long silence of the current chairman of the PS seems to show something else; Nano has surrendered before the truth. The former collaborator of N. Hoxha, the deputy of Çarçani and later prime minister of the last communist governments, Fatos Nano has been forced to come to terms with his fate, with the fate of the man who, during the time he governed, plunged the country into chaos as much as the last five years of the dictatorship. Thus Nano, the man who is prudent in speaking without saying anything, this time says a great deal through his silence. E. PALOKA

After last night’s PS meeting The PS leadership issued yesterday its declaration of isolation. Discouraged by a spirit of persecution, it does not go beyond the typical socialist mentality. It presents itself only as a final withdrawal from participation in Albanian political life while listing the great injustice caused by the absence of its own power. There has never been anything clearer than this declaration, in which one learns how you can return in defeat and how one loses by continuing to lose. Its author Ilir Meta has learned well how to lose the party. He has no other alternative as he advances according to the opportunities and spaces created by Gramoz Ruçi. Nothing can prevent the PS from moving toward the next elections, it is said, and the declaration makes use of the entire vocabulary of Doks, Pëllumbi; the Socialist Party does not need to be blocked by anyone, it is not worthy of being obstructed because it has long been blocked already. The obstruction begins far back and will continue until the open threats of legal regression, such as the one expressed in the sentence above, come to an end. The expansion expressed by the declaration presents violence and delirious hope in a socialist government. Only those who stole aid during 1991 and burned people in Fushë Arrëz, who killed young people in Shkodër, can use such a tone about obstacles. The address to which these words are sent is not only the electorate of the PD. It also clearly addresses the Socialist electorate, to whom they have given something else, denying them the other possibility. The party with volunteer police has died in Albania. It cannot return, not even as the Socialist Party. This is only the latest stigma of a leadership that the laws have excluded from the continuation of the mentality. The declaration promises old socialism for citizens through deprivatization, deconsumerization, etc., which will serve as the Socialist Party’s third electoral program. The declaration’s pullback is an overaged concentration of taking power by force, anti-reform, and not as a participant in it. Still, from the PS offices there is no proposal or declaration showing an attempt to restart this party in relation to a growing Albania. Of course, this will not happen, not even yesterday. Nor could the author of the declaration find the terms to express even from afar such an aim. Being in the opposition is not an advantage even for your history.

Yesterday’s declaration of the Socialist Party suggests that the socialists have begun looking for new members of parliament. The authorization for the verification of political figures will exclude part of the leadership and some Socialist MPs. Despite their declarations that they will not accept the above law, they have accepted it within the ranks of the leadership. They have it half-spoken: this directive makes it clear that punishments are still continuing within the leadership of this party. It is even doubtful whether there will be a new “election” among the MPs. In any case, besides new MPs, the socialists also need to find a new chairman, several deputy chairmen, and members of the leadership. For many Socialist MPs, the moral mandate has long since ended.

USD 6.5 million have been allocated by the World Bank for the complete reconstruction of the electricity network in the city of Shkodër, says the director of the electricity branch of this district, Sokol Ramadani. USD 6.5 million have been allocated by the World Bank for the complete reconstruction of the electricity network in the city of Shkodër, says the director of the electricity branch of this district, Sokel Ramadani. The project in question was approved a few days ago by the bank’s board in Washington, where the relevant contract was also signed. Work on the implementation of this project will begin next year and will be completed within 3 years. During this time, the complete reconstruction of the existing electricity network and of the low- and medium-voltage cables will be carried out, and 6 new electrical substations will be built. In this way, the growing demands of electricity users in this city will be met.

Drini Agolli: “The Socialist Party is a dinosaur ...” (From the interview in “Populli po”) P.S. According to the dictionary of contemporary Albanian, a dinosaur is a prehistoric animal that today is known only as a fossil...

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