President Berisha, the “electoral falcon of the PP,” against all other political alternatives There should not exist a “demist”? They prevent violence at the PD Conferences against the “Selami alternative” or the “Anti-Berisha alternative” On page 2: Statement by the spokesperson of the Presidency of the Socialist Party

No doctor can cure the sick PD At the last meeting of the National Council of the Democratic Party, Mr. Sali Berisha — the spectacular, pathological showman, unrivalled in this clinical discipline — aside from the understatements he has fed against the opposition as a whole and especially against the SP, no one could understand whether he was laughing bitterly, fallen prey to confusion, or had completely lost his existing political composure as he went in and out of the hall throughout the existence of that stubborn populism. It is clear that, without fully escaping the trap that the opposition has set for public opinion through the publication and rebroadcast on TVSH of his “pedagogical exercise” as a spreader of slander and fabrications, which he carried out according to his own script against the SP, driven almost to hysteria by the decision of the Congress that has just ended, Mr. Berisha found it extremely difficult to create the impression of calm. With all his political formation, he has ended up not merely as a man of political opponents’ schemes and tricks, but as the personification of a rule based on fear and hatred, of a clan-based and corrupt leadership, of a malice with destabilizing consequences for the country. If most analysts and independent commentators have rightly placed him in a special anti-trilogy alongside Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, this is both an exaggeration and a metaphor, and also a grave testimony to the political and moral punishment he deserves. We do not know how he will behave from now on with himself, with his opponents and with the SP, but with what is happening to him, he is failing more and more every day before the eyes of all Albania and Albanians. As Mr. Daut Gumeni rightly said, although his illness still cannot be fully named, it is clearly evident that he is suffering badly from self-democratization and is moving with destructive force toward incurable solitude. There is no need to add that our prediction made in this newspaper a few months ago is being confirmed: Mr. Berisha has entered the final phase of the political fasting of a party or state leader in Albania, after losing his composure through the verification of competence and through mistakes of a destructive and irresponsible nature. The PD has made all the rules improper toward it! Sali, because he has already used up, due to his own inability to lead a modern state, the crowning evidence of unmistakable political isolation. The constraints caused by the nature of his inclinations have led the PD and Albania toward self-destruction. In today’s age there is almost nowhere in the world a political force, whether in crisis or with an alternative perspective, that has a leader with dictator-like traits combined with cynical conspiracy. On the contrary, here with us the undeniable is happening and has been happening. Mr. Berisha today, instead of citizens’ trust in the possible governance of a peaceful and democratic return, is moving toward the last political adventure, and thus not only confirms the thought that he alone has caused the greatest damage to this political force, but also contributes to its total destruction. This now discredited political force becomes a mine, which Mr. Berisha, in his own name and in the name of government, is placing at the heart of power. Now, if public remedies, instead of direct punishment from his electorate, as the dissident poet V. Zhiti said with despair that the PD, even if it dies of madness, does not deserve even psychiatric treatment because of the filth it has itself thrown at Albanian politics and public opinion, Sali cannot fall either from hatred or from anyone’s sympathy. It must be said that the totality of such politics has brought a country and a party to the brink of a controllable general bankruptcy. Apparently, this very serious situation has become uncontrollable by decree and not by argument, while it may create unforeseeable consequences for society. The truth is that the PD no longer has a normal cadre discredited by the free vote. It is a seriously ill patient, with no few symptoms corresponding to disorders medicine. Since it must be diagnosed accurately, you can have no illusion that it will be cured by a personal doctor. In truth, the only cure for it remains the free electorate. If it acts quickly, annihilation will not be inevitable, because to watch this condition being governed worse and worse every day, no one can fail to fear for the future. No doctor and no other treatment can help this political force, except its final decision. The political class, as we said with bitter irony in a few words, has left this force only with hope in free and honest elections as the sole way to save itself from itself. And in the end, if the PD cannot understand its own sick condition, no one can save it from certain extinction.

The divisions within the PP have long been public. Page 4

The unlit part of the confrontation in Alitas Page 5

Interview with Hysein Kërçen, soloist at the Opera and Ballet Theatre Page 3

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