NATIONAL LIBRARY TIRANA

THE FORMER CHIEF INSPECTOR TESTIFIES AT THE PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE PAGE 3

By Fatos Lubonja For a year and a half now, as a member of the Steering Council of RTSH, I have been trying to influence Albanian television, without any personal, party, journalists’ clique, or business interests. Simply in the name of the principles of culture and professionalism, but above all of the institution’s integrity and independence. Meanwhile, all it takes is seeing that a private television station, with a handful of people, produces news that is far better than TVSH’s to feel despair. For me, this despair has to do as much with the lack of professionalism as with the lack of integrity in that institution. And these are what the Steering Council, above all, should demand and foster. But what can a person feel when they see this distinguished council vote 9 to 5 in favor of the incompetence and dishonesty of the television director, Edi Mazi, and against an outstanding and honest intellectual like Ardian Klosi? What can a person say when they see the only lawyer appointed there by the Socialist Party openly defend Edi Mazi’s thefts? What can a person say when they see a member of the Steering Council, instead of immediately resigning from it upon becoming the head of a private radio and television station, go so far as, in collaboration with Mazi, to seize the television programs as well and hatch coup after coup against Klosi? After all this, in the name of the idea that we live in a village where we meet every day, at some point you feel like exploding. To tell the truth, I could not contain myself when I saw that, even though under the new law our Steering Council was holding its final meeting, these people could not restrain their primitive instincts and, instead of letting us discuss the Festival, which was why we had gathered, and part in peace, they were determined at all costs to drag us into an absurd quarrel. To me, what happened at the Steering Council is a miniature version of what happens in Albania. Here, someone who has failed at something, for example, feels obliged to turn the loudspeaker up to full volume, disturbing more than one neighborhood with its noise; then they parade down the boulevard with their horns blaring, making a murderous din, and this is treated as perfectly normal. This is a country where, in the press, you can find yourself accused of being a murderer, a Serbian agent, a pederast, or a thief of millions, and where none of the institutions known as courts function to distinguish truth from lies or to defend you and your dignity. This is a country where the opposition has held more than a hundred illegal rallies, encouraged the blocking of national roads, the blowing up of high-voltage pylons, and armed attacks on police stations—even the Prime Minister’s Office—and is still invited to sit down at a table. We are calling this kind of uncontrolled institutional chaos democracy. After the fall of communism, Albania is suffering from a huge institutional and moral vacuum. Institutions governing people—above all those concerned with power and enrichment—as well as violence and aggression, were controlled by the dictatorship until 1991. Now, in my view, they have slipped out of control, and society cannot find a way to discipline them without infringing on freedoms and rights. We still have not learned that democracy is a system with greater degrees of freedom, which also means greater responsibility for individuals—not a system in which you can slander, steal, and kill without being punished.

Police chiefs change in Gjirokastër, Sarandë, Shkodër, Krujë, Dibër