EDITORIAL PS: Division and disintegration Yesterday the Socialists decided to hold their congress on the anniversary of their defeat. As can be seen, they will celebrate defeat together, just as happens when the other side has to celebrate victory. Thus, this celebration by the Socialist Party will sound like a negative film scene. They will remember the defeat together, and that is how it will happen to them at other congresses as well. The reason for holding the congress on 23 March next year explains nothing and comes neither from the history of their party nor from that of the party they have inherited from. At the same time, it is not an ordinary date for others either. It is an important date in the party calendar for the Democratic Party. This date can be interpreted only as an acknowledgment of the fact that the Socialists are superstitious. Otherwise, it should be said of them that they can gather only at other people’s celebrations, since their own are lacking. Losers always have reason to justify themselves, but no reason to sacrifice. So celebrations for other people’s victories, no matter how much Pellumbi N[q?]a may have seen them in Elbasan, cannot be for them at all. Yesterday’s Socialist Party meeting was held in a vacuum. Only voices could be heard, as though the mechanisms were understood, while the faces were not visible. Despite this, even with the defeat there was a possibility for the participants in the meeting to be chosen: either with the PS leaders who are in charge, or with the PS leaders who will never do this job. Yesterday none of the participants in the meeting was able to stand on equal footing. They had to take their places beside the supporters and practice according to special schemes. The Pëllumbi-Ruçi-Meta-Dokle clan has exercised its force, succeeding in avoiding replacement. That way the fifth of the clan could be removed from the game. The Zenej-Ajz-Lak[?]rori clan remains in the game. Here, one of them has managed to make it all the way to the point where Nano’s photograph has been made public; he has not been heard, and even his words have been changed. The battle of the clans at yesterday’s meeting showed that the left is experiencing a crisis of structure, in addition to several other crises that stem from the many burdens we have carried from 1941 to the present. The demand for a declaration of loyalty, encouraged by Ruçi, brings, especially at the base of this party, not freedom of speech, not freedom of ideas, but only the freedom to listen while being loyal. The declaration of loyalty does not differ much from the twenty traits of the communist. Ruçi has tried only to soften the cumbersome communist syntax, but he has not succeeded in overturning it in terms of meaning. Whoever has not remembered it, or has finished literary school, will find it easier to reread it through the dictator without the Labor Party’s bulletin. The demand for loyalty on the other hand reveals the absence of loyalty. Whoever asks for loyalty means that he is not sure of it, and since in Ruçi’s case it has a broader semantic scope, Ruçi needs loyalty because of the role he has always had. And because of the mechanisms he will use within the party, which are by no means open but very hidden, and which will lead not to the reform of this party but to its further communistization. The clans of the Socialist Party are now not like the grass, but they can become so, while Ruçi lacks an institution for their physical elimination. This completes the conduct of the form requested by Ruçi. Loyalty is no longer a party criterion but a clan criterion. It is an open call to stifle all reformist voices that it believes are still not lacking in this party. In yesterday’s meeting, the Socialist Party focused its attention much more on checking the clans than on checking the alternatives. The clans have been blamed for the crises of this political force. So in the absence of alternatives, what always happens will happen. The applause was arranged in advance. When applause is ordered, there is no room left for governance and rationalism. What are the conditions for realizing any education about possibilities? Clans in a party are neither alternatives nor possibilities. They are only a permanent overturning of any alternative.

Statement by the government spokesman Regarding the notes recently published in the newspaper ZP, where through a distortion of an article from the British newspaper Daily Telegraph of 4 December 1995 insinuations are made about the Albanian government, the government spokesman declares that: ZERI I POPULLIT Newspaper of the Socialist Party of Albania "Albania's embassy in London and the British Foreign Office heard that The Cook Report was investigating allegations that members of the Albanian government had been helping Belga to circumvent its oil embargo, and were now As the programme unfurled, the cigarette tugging slowed. The Cook Report did not feel able to make the more serious allegations, preferring instead to focus on the less sinister activities of a British company with Albanian interests." The ministers have never held an embargo meeting. 2.- In the Cook Report programme the Albanian government is not accused, nor is it mentioned at all. The two Albanians interviewed in it, the political event Ceka Pashko, raised it for their own purposes, and do not manage to formulate accusations against the government. At the center of the programme are two British companies operating in Albania. In a press release by the British journalist working in Tirana dated 29 November 1995, the claims against the government concerning the events of the report with two foreign companies are rejected. Our office has all the documentation relating to the above. 3. ZP deceives the Albanian public opinion by deliberately mistranslating the Daily Telegraph of 4 December 1995. ZP presents as facts the claims about breaking the embargo on the firms mentioned by it, which the Daily Telegraph itself calls unproven. ZP states that "the Albanian embassy in London and the British Ministry had learned from The Cook Report and its investigations that members of the Albanian government had helped Serbia bypass the oil embargo by using their own funds, which they are now depositing in London". Whereas the Daily Telegraph writes exactly that "the Albanian Embassy in London and the British Foreign Office had heard that Cook Report was investigating allegations that members of the Albanian government had helped Serbia evade the oil embargo, and that they were now depositing their profits in London banks." In this same article the newspaper informs that the Cook Report programme itself was unable even to present all the allegations, but instead dealt with British companies with interests in Albania. Unfortunately, ZP has developed the tradition of falsification, as is recently proven also with the English newspaper Financial Times. The Government spokesman condemns these irresponsible slanders by ZP as shameful acts that have nothing to do either with journalism or with normal political struggle.

Berisha met with Rugova Yesterday morning President Berisha received the President of Kosovo, Dr. Ibrahim Rugova, and discussed with him the situation in the region and the possibilities for resolving the Kosovo issue. Both Presidents agree that the Dayton agreement and the final signing of the peace treaty in Bosnia-Herzegovina in Paris create conditions for the beginning of the resolution of the Kosovo issue. Such a moment is suitable for the beginning of constructive and direct talks between Pristina and Belgrade in the presence of a third party to resolve the Kosovo problem.

From the Socialist Party heritage collection Minutes of the Political Bureau meeting of the Central Committee of the PPSH, dated 2 and 3 July 1974 p.7

Fest '95 "Do you love love" the audience prize for the 2nd night The aim toward contemporary styles has been felt in previous editions, starting in 1990 and continuing in the following years. This tendency to approach more musical currents, with new instruments, new techniques, and orchestrations that express both horizontal and upward movement, has been consolidated in the various artistic and cultural activities in the field of music and especially in the spring concerts and song festivals. Here too our artists have set themselves the goal of strengthening musical identity in a new conceptual space. On page four (continues on page 3)

Genocidists outside and inside the party PS victims of criminal elements Yesterday’s PS meeting decisively set that its activists should be subject to the genocide law if they run for election. This compulsory decision of the PS meeting seems as if there were a new space for reform within this party. That does not seem to be the case, and even a kind of false enthusiasm among the participants in the meeting, who merely found the courage not to accompany the speeches of Pëllumbi and Ruçi with applause, gives no such impression. However, in the shadow of this enthusiasm there were no lack of ironic smiles from Ruçi and the beauties of his political jargon, as Ruçi likes to say in intimate settings, meaning in incriminated government settings, where the former interior minister is found at home. The final results of yesterday’s meeting seemed to leave it precise in advance (he together with Nano still decide everything for the fate of this party’s pit) and have very often caused this fleeting enthusiasm: Ruçi, as former interior minister, one who knows very well the files and accusations that have verified the future candidacies for the PS electoral campaigns. And of course, whoever passes through Doctor Ruçi’s filter and comes out of it cannot be any cleaner, just as one cannot come clean from a sea of muck and handcuffs from a smaller pool. Meanwhile Nano, a phantom-like character of the Buonesinjdet, headed the electoral commission. Surely that is enough to show how much this party can be cleaned of criminal elements, which, although formally remaining outside, in reality remain inside the party; fully controlling it and digging the grave of its future. N.GJINI

Statement of the Association of Journalists of Albania The Association of Journalists of Albania notes with concern the increase in pressure by political subjects on the press in journalism. Although one may speak of the beginning of electoral conditions on the eve of a tension and nervousness which in some cases turns into vulgar insults and banality for newspapers and the press. Unfortunately, the chairmen of political parties that claim to be serious are also helping in this climate. The well-known case of insults and vulgar abuse, instead of arguments against press accusations, and hidden claims by PSD chairman S. Gjuni against president R. Alia, while not being the first, does not seem likely to be the last either. Taking into account the not-so-good experience reflected during previous parliamentary elections, the Association of Journalists appeals for the assistance of political subjects and their leaders in creating a favorable climate for information. Association of Journalists of Albania Chairman YLLI RAKIPI

NATIONAL LIBRARY TIRANA

THEN I DO WHAT DO WE THINK! THEY KEEP ON THE LEGS OF THE PARLIAMENT! THE OPPOSITION

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