Message from French Foreign Minister de Charette In recent days, the French Republic’s foreign minister, Herve de Charette, sent a message to the foreign minister which, regarding the request President Berisha put forward during his stay in Paris, as well as at his meeting with the president of the French Senate, Monori, in Tirana, notes that “France is very much in favor of the rapid opening of negotiations for an association agreement between the European Union and your country. For us, this is a political priority, given the level of our relations and the place you hold on the international stage.” Minister Charette also assures that, during the forthcoming negotiations, France will take the needs of the Albanian economy into account.

“The two-stage congress is the congress of the SP’s final dissolution—not in the first phase, but in the second phase” p. 3

. The message that Fatos Nano addressed to the SP congress is the clearest model of a testament demonstrating that he has returned to his roots. The spirit of total denial of democracy and the open threat he made to Albanians, declaring that the SP’s aim is to dismantle legal institutions and destroy state structures, is the worst promise a politician can make to the people. Nano’s moral and political code, shaped under the constant tutelage of the old dictator Hoxha, can produce and offer no alternative other than destruction. Indeed, this same alternative, under the tutelage of the Hoxha widow and Ramiz Alia, was offered to Albanians in 1990–1991. Destruction, killings, mysterious disappearances of people, exoduses, hunger, long queues, and open physical terror were the alternatives Nano and Alia offered Albanians. And now, after four years of steadfast commitment to this alternative, Nano once again issues an open threat through a message. There is no other name for such a declaration about dismantling legal institutions and state structures. To offer Albanians, now, after four years of democracy’s linear development, the alternative of dismantling state institutions established in accordance with international standards and legitimized by a pluralist parliament through a majority vote means nothing more or less than promising a return to totalitarianism. A return to totalitarianism. Nano’s phobia of every achievement and his threat to destroy institutions are, in this case, also linked to his desire for this great destruction, because he thinks this is the only way he can escape punishment for the millions of dollars he stole while he was prime minister. The idea that, in a democracy, these institutions are independent and governed only by law terrifies Nano, because when he committed these thefts and abuses, or issued flagrantly illegal orders, he thought he was—and would remain forever—immune to the law. At no point throughout the period when he was tried did he produce even the slightest argument or evidence to prove that he had not committed theft and abuses; instead, he repeatedly chanted the slogan, “They are imprisoning me for political reasons.” Indeed, to avoid being “bothered” by the trial court, the prosecutors, or the witnesses when they confronted him with evidence and facts, he chose not to answer. In essence, deep down, Nano admits that he stole, but according to his moral code these thefts are “unpunishable” because he was prime minister and later opposition leader. Thus, according to Nano, institutions governed solely by law must be dismantled and replaced by others that declare the thefts committed by high-ranking officials unpunishable. This is the alternative Nano offers Albanians. The destruction and repudiation promised by Nano also affect foreign policy. He does not hesitate to speak of changing the course and the partners Albania has secured today. By proclaiming his roots, Nano’s message is an open call to return to the dark year of 1991. In the most cynical and unscrupulous manner, he calls today’s democratic regime apartheid, without saying a word about Enver Hoxha’s communist dictatorship. Indeed, judging solely from this message, it seems as if Albania had never had a communist dictatorship at all. He also does not spare the market economy from his anathema, offering Albanians state control over the economy—which means socialist planning (the fruits of which Albanians know from the long queues and food ration coupons). Through this message, Nano appears as the model of a politician who offers not new visions and the country’s progressive development as an alternative, but a return to the past, dismantling democratic institutions, nostalgia for the totalitarian system, and so on. But what is Nano seeking to convey to the socialists with this message, which lays out the alternative of turning back, the alternative of destroying and dismantling institutions? Well informed that his opposition, former Ruci, has made this a reality by bringing to this congress only delegates belonging to a group of conservative Enverist hardliners, he thinks that the alternative of returning to one’s roots—that is, turning back and dismantling institutions—will be more appealing to these left-wing militants who have lost their seats. But Nano’s message and the calculations of both him and Ruci will bring back neither a single delegate in the hall, much less the Albanian electorate. This message, in its harsh and nostalgic language, is the “passport” of his politics and of the party he leads from prison, where he is serving his sentence for the thefts he committed.

Political Secretary of the DP of Albania, Mr. Ferdinand Xhaferi, speaks to “RD” Although democracy is good for all Albanians and is their future and prosperity, the hatred and attacks that the socialists direct at democracy and its values have shown that their eyes are fixed on Marx and that they are completely incapable of renewal, Xhaferi commented. And this marks the political end of this party, its destruction, which happened because this Party was unable to remove from its leadership the criminal elements, the genocidaires, and Enver nostalgics, the Hoxhaists.” p. 3

The DP Vice-Chairman, Mr. Tomorr Dosti, speaks to “RD” about the recent SP congress Our reality is denied by those people who, in my view, have no moral right to involve themselves in political life. They are the ones who, in their lectures in various lecture halls, affirmed and defended with the persistence of fools the principle of class struggle as a driving force of society. p. 3

Europe shifts to the right The majority in the local elections in Germany

The “priorities” of Pellumbi’s alternative were a fleeting life that failed to conceal the socialists’ disheartened leadership. Apart from the star-like smile inherited from Ruçi, the rest of the PS leadership showed only somber faces and anxious, cheering masks. If Pellumbi, by displaying the “advantages” of the political platform of continuity, knew that he was putting a golden cap of ideological fanaticism on his career, perhaps the others had spent all this time losing themselves in the service of Ruçi’s ministerial ego. For the latter, in his role as chief inspector of PS figures, together with the file mechanism, will put into operation the mechanism of unconditional exclusion against those who feel they are outside his powerful clan. The socialists’ congress was a masquerade, which, under Ruçi’s scrutiny, directs a seeker’s fresco of the first period of the PPSH Congress in the memories of the PS. Why did the members of the leadership feel as if they were on top of the world, while Pellumbi displayed an obsession with humane Marxism, which only called for moving socialism forward together, and Ruçi posed as the “powerful” and “popular” politician who knows “what he wants”? An entire leadership could be disheartened only when it felt excluded from being what it was—in other words, a leadership such as the PS leadership, which in fact feels like a tool of former interior minister Ruçi. Such a leadership, after all, accustomed to being a tool of the Big Men and of the former Albanian secret police, can also be content with the role of tool, if that role were guaranteed in the future as well. But confronting the past seemed quite painful for most of this leadership, since the files, along with the wall erected there by those who do not want to engage in politics, also represent a moral and political ruin for a party that has come to beg the electorate for votes. A leadership with ruined morals—that is the syndrome of a bewildered congress, in a place where it should hold elections, because, just as would happen to a covered corpse that decomposes for lack of air, the same would happen to the fictitious edifice of socialist unity. A unity hardened in the school of the files, which will suffer a setback, the pragmatists of the UC advised, as we confront it with democratic law, which is not the foremost principle in its activities.

p. 6

p. 2