This article has been written for Albanian Free Press newspaper and www.afp.al
Never say never!
There are many people who know the expression “never say never”, but very few know that this expression was born in the Durres pier, in a place where something that the city really needs is being built: something absurd weighing 10 thousand tons and costing 6 million euros, called “Veliera”.
According to Diodorus of Sicily, “everything should have a limit and one must not go to the extreme, like the residents of Durres did. After fighting each other, they threw at sea a quantity of red hot iron and pledged that they would never put an end to their hostilities until the hot iron was taken out of the sea. Meanwhile, they were later forced by the circumstances to let the iron cool off in the depths of the abyss”. This happened 2500 years ago.
As far as the June 2017 “never say never expression” is concerned, declarations like “we will not be pressured by them”, seem to have given way to declarations such as “one thing is sure, elections will take place on 18 June”. A question is raised: what would be the possible moves and what would be the consequences of these moves?
4 options
In my opinion, there would be four:
- If a technocrat government is not formed, the opposition participates in the elections, it loses them along with its dignity and the DP becomes an insignificant party.
- If a technocrat government is not formed, the opposition boycotts the elections and doesn’t accept them, leading to a series of protests (violent or not) and to a fall in investments and GDP, according to the ‘96/’97 scenario.
- By repeating the 2013 act, after a noble/pathetic speech for the good of the nation and the region, SMI leaves the coalition and a technocrat government is formed.
- The SP doesn’t allow the SMI to be attributed the noble role, but after the noble/pathetic speech, it resigns, thus giving way to a technocrat government.
Out of these four options, the third and the fourth ones are the most plausible ones. This would give meaning to Basha’s expression “it doesn’t matter when the elections are held; what’s important is how the elections are held” and Rama’s expression “one thing is sure, the elections will be held on 18 June”. This last expression is similar to the calls of croupiers: “all chips are down”.
If all this resembles to reality, the SP must decide when to throw this card on the green table: Not too late, otherwise it will be the SMI that will throw it and not too early, as this would leave the opposition time to neutralize the machinery of electoral tricks.
As far as the DP is concerned, its situation is determined by the chess term “zeitnot”, which doesn’t promise much time to dismantle the electoral rigging machinery, which relies on the 8 billion euros worth of cannabis, on the 500 criminals who have been just pardoned (out of a total of 747 of those who have been pardoned, 500 are delinquents) and millions gained through corruptive tenders involving MPs.
The Establishment
I once wrote an article called “When Albania takes an aspirin, its fever goes up”, in the sense that Albania always has its original way of solving problems. This also includes the world crisis of confidence toward the establishments, the groups which lead a nation: If this crisis brought Tsipras’ SYRIZA in power in Greece or Trump in the states, in Albania, it saw the most grotesque form possible. Disappointed by political parties, Albanian electors lost all confidence on them. This led to inflation in votes and the vote was no longer perceived as an expression of democracy, but as a voucher which could be sold for the price of a pair of shoes or 7 kg of beans.
In German, “zauberkreis” means a cat that goes round in circles, bites its tail and cries from the pain, without realizing that it is biting its own tail. “I’m surprised that the crowd follows those that despise and mistreat them”, writes Beertold Brehti.
This is the worst thing that post-communism has done to Albanian morale: Exchanging free vote with a pair of shoes or some beans. And this raises a question: can this machinery be dismantled?
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Note: The stances expressed in the Opinion section do not necessarily represent the editorial line of Albanian Free Press
