On the offensive again
Editorial
President Berisha added another new episode to the “history” of the DP, a new “work” that could take its place in the series “Conversations and Instructions.” Yesterday he met with the new leaders elected by the DP branches in the districts. By now, even the indifferent public—not just the participants in the conferences—has learned the truth about how these elections were conducted. They were arenas of elbowing and factional clashes, of purges of former Sigurimi agents, as even the DP’s own press reported, albeit humorously.
Berisha said nothing about why those who had been in charge until yesterday were leaving, or what this deep operation on the body of his exhausted party was supposed to mean. Or, as the people say, in the house of the hanged man, one does not talk about the rope.
We would leave Berisha and his party to their grotesque meditations, were it not for the fact that this meeting was used to make some untruthful claims. Berisha spoke as if Albanian intellectuals and young people were longing for the DP, as if they had found in this party a protective umbrella and an expression of their dreams and aspirations. He is mistaken.
The intellectuals, otherwise known as “the brain of the nation,” have so far been purged by the DP. It would be a blessing for the party and for Albanian democracy if they really served their homeland through the DP’s alternative. They have turned away from the DP because they see it as an arena for struggles to get rich illegally, for nepotism and corruption, and for fierce clashes between factions.
As for what Berisha said about young people, it sounds like the lectures of years gone by, because no one—not even the president—can conceal the bitter truth: instead of closing ranks around the DP, young people have taken to the roads of the world. Hundreds of thousands of young people cannot enjoy their homeland, family, work, or property—in other words, Berisha’s “Contract”—because the DP has bitterly disappointed them.
Yesterday’s meeting once again featured President Berisha’s harsh remarks about the opposition, labeling it in neo-communist terms. On this basis, he also builds the work the DP is supposed to do with the people, which he calls “dialogue.” It is just like the old slogan about getting down on one’s knees with the people. The DP has turned the people back in time, and no dialogue can deny or hasten the loneliness the party is experiencing, with its government as the most active servant of its irreparable crisis.
As long as Berisha refuses to give up his role as the party’s conductor while wielding power, and as long as he fails to respect the institution of the presidency—which, in the spirit of the law, should remain distant from and above his political clashes—it is pointless for him to act against the opposition, particularly against the Socialist Party, as he has done.