The Comedians
Editorial
These days, in front of the Albanian Radio and Television building, another spectacle is being staged, concocted in the back rooms of those offices known as the Democratic Party. Four members of parliament from this party are supposedly so indignant that the so-called “Arbnori Amendment” is not being respected that they have decided to sacrifice themselves. A newspaper yesterday was quite right to describe such acts as making the DP look ridiculous.
The first thing that can be said on this occasion is that these four gentlemen, old musketeers of Albanian politics, are not so worried about the fate of an amendment; rather, by this action they are trying to keep alive the strategy of violence and political tension in the country, which has become the way of behaving for Sali Berisha’s party. Even if the Arbnori Amendment did not exist, they would invent a hunger strike, or a strike involving eating and drinking—it hardly matters—but in any case it would be a strike that would make newspaper headlines and lead the radio and television broadcasts. The leaders of the DP have so thoroughly trivialized this sublime act that, when a hunger strike is mentioned, everyone thinks of Tuç Maku of the well-known sect, who was asking for livi.
Everyone knows that the opposition has been given plenty of airtime on RTV thanks to the intakon, while Berisha vents his primitive rages against the new government on TV every night. Therefore, it must be concluded that other causes are prompting such unserious positions. Among them we can mention:
First, the strike has been concocted between two important events: the Brussels Meeting and the recovery of the victims of the Otranto Channel. Berisha was invited to Brussels by Prime Minister Nano and did not go, but even in his absence he suffered a fiasco, because various international donors decided to support the new Albanian government, while he had been protesting that the world was not helping this government and had even isolated it. Going to Brussels would have been a slap in the face for Berisha’s destructive positions. Meanwhile, Berisha was not invited to go to Brindisi with the President of the Republic, Medani, but he could have gone anywhere except among the families of the victims of a tragic event such as that of March 28, for which he bears grave responsibility. Consequently, to make people forget Brussels, even a little—the complete success of this event, which marks a turning point in Albania’s relations with the democratic world—and to make them forget Otranto, the grave state crime that was allowed to be committed against Albanians during the five years of DP rule, the hunger strike by the four MPs was concocted.
Second, the strike by the four MPs represents a “show of force” applied by the DP and Sali Berisha against the democratic state, which means that this event has at its core the idea of seizing power by force. These are not conjectures. Berisha announced such a platform at the DP national assembly, when he called for the faction he represents to become, from now on, a party of protests until it returns to power. And everywhere in the world, State Radio and Television is one of the principal targets of a coup d’état. It is understandable that this would be an adventure doomed to fail from the outset, but anything can be expected from political adventurers of the Hajdari type.
Third, the strike is intended to attract the attention especially of international actors, because as far as people here are concerned, they have long since distanced themselves from Berisha’s party. But international actors also know that for nearly a month Berisha has been holding illegal rallies in central Tirana. For a month Berisha has been holding illegal rallies. So, does a political force have the right to break the law every day and demand respect for a law, when the DP and Berisha have forfeited their other right? The DP and Berisha have lost the moral right to talk about laws, much less to present themselves as their defenders.
The way this strike has been organized has an element that makes you laugh, just like the whole party makes you laugh; it is party makes you laugh, just like the whole party, which does not have that necessarily simple harmony. [The lower part of the column is unclear.]