-Speaks Ilir Meta, deputy chairman of the PSSH 52% to 48%, the “electoral match” between the Polish left represented by the special deputy Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the right of Lech Wałęsa ended like this. How do you assess this victory of the Polish left? - 52% to 48%, the “electoral match” between the Polish left represented by 40-year-old Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the right of Lech Wałęsa ended like this. How do you assess this victory of the Polish left? Ilir Meta: The great success of the Polish left and its leader Aleksander Kwaśniewski speaks of the rebirth and consolidation of the democratic left in Poland and throughout Central and Eastern Europe, bearing in mind that the course of the Polish factors has also expressed the tendency of political developments in Central and Eastern Europe. Poland is one of the countries that most resisted the establishment of the communist regime, systematically reacting against it. In particular, we can mention the anti-communist movement SOLIDARNOST led by Wałęsa. Therefore Poland is one of the first countries to rejoice in democracy. Anti-communism was necessary to challenge the old regime, but it showed that it did not (continued on page 5)

Editorial The new President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, is “lucky” not to be Albanian. He, who entered politics at an early age, was once also a minister, although today he is around 40. As a former minister, with the Byzantine mentality of our rulers, he should not only have not thought that he could win the high office of President of Poland by the free vote of the people, but not even take part in politics. But in Poland they do not know the Albanian vocabulary of the struggle against genocide, so even a left-wing politician, by the will of the people, can come to the high office of president, as Kwaśniewski did. The victory of the right. Kwaśniewski over the legendary anti-communist Wałęsa in the second round of the Polish presidential elections is indeed the coming to power of the left, but it is by no means the return of communism, nor the return of agricultural cooperatives, livestock collectivization, a centralized economy, savage class warfare, and therefore also of campaigns for the legal condemnation of genocides signed by Albanian hands. Wałęsa is a personality with worldwide reputation at this end of the century. By climbing onto the platforms of the Gdańsk shipyard in August 1981 to lead the famous Solidarnost until the fall of communism in Poland, he represents an era. But today he is in a kind of decline. Every star has its zenith, just as it has an end. Wałęsa is forced to leave the office of president; this is an example that anyone can be temporary in power. Wałęsa was the product of populism, of a movement of several million people which, dissatisfied with a way of life, sought to transform itself through a change in state institutions. Populism can bring one triumphantly to power, but it also has quick disappointments behind it, even the turning away of those social strata and groups that cheered you on. The electorate turned its back on Wałęsa not because of the handsome face of his rival, because not long ago Wałęsa was called charismatic. There are other motives, those that determine the vote of the people in a country in transition, such as Poland. In official Albania they will try to minimize this “upheaval” that happened on Sunday in Poland; they will even look for unconvincing arguments that Poland is different, Albania is different, that Polish socialists are different from Albanian socialists. Differences are undeniable, but it is an unprincipled and political dead end to try to fight the Albanian Socialist opposition as if it were different from the rest of the world. That is what our rulers said when the elections were held in Hungary, and in Bulgaria, and in Slovakia, etc., where a few years after the collapse of communism the left came to power. This historical process of the left coming to power is an equation with many unknowns. They cannot be explained by the people trapped in the current knot of entanglements who run Albania, who think that the sun has begun to rise and that they are known when they came to power. Albanian official propaganda, not knowing how to explain the phenomena of the East, where it finds abundant elements to “decode” the entire transition in Albanian, has clung to the communist concept of the “special case.” But can everything that happens in today’s Albania be explained by our specific characteristics? In this way we do nothing but create Homo Albanicus. How long will this go on?

PRICES TRADERS WAGE INCREASES Honi '95 Read on page 7

-Interview with Prof. Dr. Ethem Ruka Read on page 4

-Interview with the deputy chairman of the PSSH Prof. Servet Pellumbi A possible PS victory in the upcoming elections will not hinder but will actually facilitate integration into NATO and the Euro-Atlantic alliances Read on page 2