The President’s spokesperson responds SP accuses the President of attacking the opposition by distorting facts. The very fact that they mention nothing concrete shows that they continue to dip their pens in the ink of lies and slander. It is the President’s constitutional duty to issue an appeal regarding any political, social, etc. phenomenon that may be harmful to the country’s society. In the interest of truth, it must be emphasized that the SP—with its ideological condition, its old connections and lack of new ones, its Marxism, Leninism and Enverism, its concept of state property and a planned economy, its contempt for Albanian intellectuals, and its genetically anti-European and anti-integrationist character—constitutes a sinister force for the country’s destiny. p. 3

Dokle has discovered enemies in the European Union The Eurobarometer results have left the socialists stunned. Dokle, one of the leading figures of the Socialist Party, has meanwhile discovered enemies within the European Union. According to him, Eurobarometer is an agency serving the Democratic Party and democracy in Albania. Eurobarometer is one of the most prestigious organizations in Europe, all the more so when it has conducted polls in post-communist Europe. This is not the first poll it has conducted in Albania, and its results have likewise sometimes been such as not to warm the Democratic Party. Despite this, the DP’s response has been realistic and has acknowledged the seriousness of Eurobarometer’s polls. It has sifted through its weaknesses and repaired them. But precisely in this case, Dokle and his bosses have not been short of euphoria. Its latest results show this very clearly. The Democratic Party is at the top of the poll, with a percentage twice that of the Socialist Party. Certainly, the Democratic Party will win more in the next elections than this poll predicts, but it does not complain that its result is only twice the socialists’ result, although there is reason to consider even that possibility. Meanwhile, Namik Dokle takes his conscience to the marketplace and unleashes a torrent of accusations against the European Union. He does so with statements Statement by the Presidium of the Albanian Democratic Party After the failure of the unprecedented act of February 2 in Parliament, gripped by the deep psychosis of certain defeat, the fundamentalists at the head of the SP undertook, in their latest statement, an Enveriad against the President of the Republic, the DP, and its state and party structures. From beginning to end, this statement is dominated by the vocabulary, style and phraseology of a pamphlet, and would please any group of left- or right-wing extremists; indeed, fundamentalists and terrorists prove to be inseparable and alike. The dogmatists at the head of the SP begin their tract by declaring that they support respect for institutions. But with this they are only mocking themselves. Everything they have written, as well as their calls for skulls to be split, people to disappear, a Night of St. Bartholomew, civil war and physical clashes, together with yesterday’s tract, shows that we are dealing with a group of fanatics ready, yesterday as today, to commit acts of violence, terror and crime. Their calls for tolerance bring to mind two characters in a Chekhov story who, after killing several innocent people, found smoked meat in their bags but said to each other: we are at a time of mercy and must not sin by eating meat. In their tract, the red-browns at the head of the SP pledge loyalty to state institutions, while practicing apartheid against their own party, the SP. If that is not the case, why do you lie at your conferences in the districts, where ordinary SP members ask you about your role in the massacres of February and April 2, about the millions of dollars from April that disappeared, about the arrest of your students, your secret trips, etc., etc.? You know that you are responsible for all this and that the law is only just beginning to address these cases, yet you give them no explanation; on the contrary, you have turned your party into a Masonic sect. You know very well that April 3, the day Parliament was dissolved, was your end, and, like drowning men, you are trying to sink your own party as well. You know very well what is coming, but you hope to escape by inciting clashes. But do not forget that you will be the first to receive what you deserve. The rule-of-law state is ready to reward all individuals according to their deserts, including you, political adventurers. In 1993 you declared in Switzerland that the former monster Enver was a Father to you. Are you not the ones who ran the dictatorship’s ministry of crime and its monstrous propaganda machine? But one cannot expect a different morality from you. In your tract you accuse the President of having called your clandestine candidates young boys. Then we ask you: why are you lying? It is you who wrote in the newspaper ZP, in the issue of December 5, page 3: “the young boys on the SP lists during the campaign will be much more dignified than the statesmen of the DP,” and continued below: “here the DP must also take into account the fact that in some electoral districts one of its candidates will face two SP candidates.” Deni Dido says that “the slanderer is one of the most bloodthirsty wild animals,” while we tell you that you have understood politics as the art of scoundrels—and that is what you are. So not only do you call young boys those who agreed to stand as candidates for you, but you insult them in the most despicable way by assigning two candidates to their districts. We tell you that this is a grave insult not only to the proposed candidates, but to the entire Albanian electorate. We ask you, although you are condemned to disappear from the political scene, why do you keep them as clandestine candidates and not allow those proposed as candidates to… The Chekhovti, who, after killing several innocent people, found their most terrifying bags somehow, but said to one another: We are in a fortress and must not sin by eating meat. In their leaflet, the red-brownists at the head of the PS pledge loyalty to state institutions, but in reality this is another great hypocrisy of theirs. Their loyalty to democracy has been “stolen” from them by the secret sect to which they belong. The fundamentalists who lead the PS declare that they have no respect for the President of the Republic, because he is dividing them and attacking the opposition, raising tensions. On this occasion, we want to assure you that your vote against the President on the day of his election, all the weak positions you have taken, and this latest leaflet constitute a special distinction for Sali Berisha. In Albania, not only the President but even an ordinary person cannot help feeling insulted by the respect shown by Gramoz Ruçi, the persecutor of his comrades in his youth, former first secretary of the Southern Front, the Minister who carried out the massacres of February and April 1991 against Albanians. Servet Pëllumbi, the informer against his colleagues and students, an irredeemable Byzantine and Bolshevik. Kastr ioti Islami, a former resident in Paris, a monster who took it upon himself to order people to be shot in June 1991 (for which the DP has complete documents), the anti-civilized minister who closed the University in March 1991 and called for skulls to be cracked in July 1993. Namik Dokle, an ordinary thief who, after filling his pockets with dollars, was forced to give up the role of clown and vote against himself; otherwise, he now maintains and renews his ties with the new Dushans and Miladins. We are not interested in your biographies. We mentioned these things only to put this question to you: does a person lose or win if you do not respect them? In your leaflet, you complain that the President is imposing political apartheid on you. We therefore ask you: having killed, stolen, spied and informed on people, are you now trying to use the words “apartheid” and “grave insult” not only for the proposed candidates, but for the entire Albanian electorate? We ask you: since do you keep the proposed candidates hidden and prevent people from getting to know them? Are you a legal or an illegal party? The PS is a legal party, and we respect it, whereas you are illegal, unlawfully at its head, and you are in the final days and weeks of your political life. For four years you have smeared Zhirinovsky in Russia and your friends in Belgrade; you have attacked NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe, the World Bank, the IMF, major figures in German, Italian, American, Austrian and world politics, etc. Now you are experiencing the darkness of isolation and the deep international contempt you deserve. It is precisely for these reasons—the great successes in Albanian foreign policy and President Berisha’s contribution to these achievements—that you are blinded and terrified, and now, being nobodies, you try to comment on them according to your own appetite. In your leaflet, you call the Secretary General of the DP a peasant. You insult Prof. Dr. Tritan Shehu, who comes from one of Gjirokastër’s oldest urban families and has many ties to, and great respect for, the farmers of Gjirokastër and all Albania. Naturally, not for those peasants who received Jakomni’s decorations or take rewards from the Dushans, nor for those who run the dictatorship’s prisons or informed on their fellow villagers in Mallakastër. But by calling Mr. Shehu a peasant, you think you can deepen the town-country divide, forgetting that progress and contempt for this policy, in favor of and above the PS, are being expressed every day. In conclusion, we think the question must be asked: why is there such great aggression by these fundamentalists toward the President? We suspect that the cause of these politicians’ aggression, in a state of clinical self-delusion, lies in their feverish desire to restore order in the troubled fold. But they are lost! March and early April mark the wretched end of their political lives in Albanian politics. In your pamphlet, you accuse the President of denying you alternatives. The President cannot deny you something you never had. For four years, you political adventurers have presented Albania with a single name from the PS as the sole alternative: the anti-DP, anti-Berisha alternative. Has your alternative been, and does it remain, civil war, clashes, the night of St. Bartholomew, February 2? A parliamentary vote against 270 new laws. You swear that you support the rule of law and the market economy. Then may we ask you: were you not the ones who voted against the Charter of Human Rights, the new codes, and the laws on privatization, the sale and purchase of land, and securities? The rule of law and a market economy can never exist without these laws. You claim that you have broken with and condemned the past. You are lying, and no one in Albania—not even Europe—believes you. You are the PPSH under another name. Read the 10th Congress and its decision to rename the PPSH as the PS. Listen to your chairman, how he ... heads of state, although you have never once been able to substantiate any of your accusations, you repeat his statements. You scream that he is dividing you. It is not the President who is dividing you; it is your sad record that makes today’s tide single you out as the rotten remnants of a society that is no more. It is the theory you believe in, and the acts you have committed, that forever separate you from the democratic path in Albania, from the democratic path of the PS, and soon from one another as well. You complain that the President is attacking you, at a time when in Enver’s rag you devote half of it every day to him alone, publishing everything from calls for murder and assassination attempts to the insults and abuse of miserable street thugs. The President has tolerated you with boundless patience, while time and God have condemned you definitively. You think that by playing the role of beasts you will escape the verdict. Accept and learn the verdict: for you it is an appeal, the poison of the plant you sowed; you will see it on April 3 and will become what you deserve, what you are.

Tritan Shehu in Germany On 11.02.96, at the invitation of the Secretary General of the German Christian Democratic Union, Chancellor Kohl’s party, a delegation of the PDSH headed by Mr. Tritan Shehu set off on a visit to Germany. This visit will contribute to the further strengthening of reciprocal relations between the PDSH and the German Christian Democratic Union. Mr. Tritan Shehu will also hold many other meetings with prominent figures in current German politics. p. 2

The young boys are the SP’s “invention,” not the President’s

The European Commission Delegation in Tirana confirms the Eurobarometer figures The Delegation of the European Commission in Tirana yesterday confirmed the figures from the well-known Eurobarometer poll, published on Sunday in several Albanian newspapers, concerning the support of the Albanian electorate for the political parties. The figures published in several Albanian newspapers are high and represent the same results obtained from the questions in the poll conducted by Eurobarometer, the Albanian newspaper “ATSH” said ... in an interview ... with the EC Delegation, the spokesperson for its ... Mr. Agron Bala. According to data from Eurobarometer, this well-known institution of European organizations, when asked clearly which party they would vote for, or which party they would prefer to give their vote to, respondents answered that 45% of them would vote for the governing Democratic Party and only 22% for the main opposition party, the Socialist Party. of it and has drafted and compiled all ... of DOKleS with his bosses. His latest results show this best. with a percentage twice that of the Socialist Party. Of course, the Democratic Party will win more in the upcoming that its result is only twice the result for the socialists, although there is reason to think about that too. Meanwhile, Namik Dokle goes public with his conscience He does so with the coolness of someone who does not know, and just as much with the resentment of someone who has been badly battered. When you consider that he is also one of the leading figures in the Socialist Party, you understand that Europe is still not on this party’s agenda. It is against the Albanian reality that has also been concretely realized over four years, and likewise against the great inclination of Albanians to integrate as fully as possible into Europe. Dokle is a result of the Socialist Party’s policy toward Albania’s relations with the European Union. He is further proof that a party with leaders like these does not have in mind the integration of Albanians where they can naturally integrate, but rather their connection to the communist legacy that this party carries, and sending Albanians once again to where they were kept for decades. The Socialist Party is in mourning over the Eurobarometer results. It cannot accept, several months in advance, that it will lose. Regardless of the fact that defeat has accompanied this party over these four years. It has lost in the face of economic reform, lost in the face of institutional reform, political reform, and legal reform. All the worse for them if these defeats have passed into their subconscious. The political struggle in Albania has been about these things. It has not been against people, it has not been against Europe, and it has not been waged so that the people would lose. If the Eurobarometer has confirmed the Democratic Party’s victory, it has confirmed Albania’s victory, the victory of reform, and has established the political geography of Albanians in Europe. When Socialist leader Dokle attacks these results, saying that the Eurobarometer is biased, contrary to what he said in April last year, it means that he is attacking not only Europe but also Albania, the aspirations of the people of this country and this country’s achievements. Even the most desperate politician does not treat people this way after expecting their votes. When a political party fails, it cannot vent its anger on the people. The politicians and policies of the past have failed in this respect too. A people is immune to despair, while those forces that represent the opposite of its European will, such as the Socialist Party, face isolation from the electorate and the future.

The young boys are the SP’s “invention,” not the President’s HAMDI JUPE: will be much more dignified than the statesmen...” “ZP” 5.12.1995 HAMDI JUPE: the theory of the young boys... “I was the first to use it” ZP 10.2.1996 STATEMENT BY THE SP PRESIDIUM: “We consider Berisha’s latest description of his political opponents and competitors as ‘young boys’ to be the ultimate manifestation of political and institutional irresponsibility...” 10.2.1996 Published in “ZP” p. 3

Denial by the spokesperson of the Ministry of the Interior p. 3

Memorandum to the Assembly of the A.D. from Assembly member Dr. Albert Karriqi p. 4

Interview with the well-known comedian Paulin Selimi p. 2