By Frrok Çupi
All in all, the political crisis, the frequent visits by westerners, the Freedom Tent, the government’s resistance not to make concession;… and at the end, the “triumphant” solution, by building a technocrat government with the previous Prime Minister… Everything has a simple meaning, a very simple one. The scope is for each Albanian citizen to have a “telephone”.
Don’t think that they need a telephone device or a telephone number, because even the farmer of the most remote village has a phone now. But, officially, half of the population didn’t have a “telephone”. I say “officially half of it” because according to the Parliamentary elections of June 2013, those who didn’t vote the majority were almost half of the voters. Little by little, the votes “in favor” leaked and they became either neutral or against. Of course, the government lost credit along the way way. Here, we must add the votes of SMI (in the majority alliance). So, the number of people who had access to the state (sometimes at the end of the legislative period), turned into a minority.
This was the solution that the crisis required: For each of them, not only the government’s voters, to have a telephone.
But once again, we must clarify what sort of telephone we’re talking about. We’re talking about a government telephone line and not an individual one.
About a request that nobody should be neglected and even less to be attacked by the government, meaning, by all government levels. If you’re a supporter of the opposition, you must have your own “channel”, in order for the government’s phone to respond immediately. If you’re neutral, this will also be the case.
After the government changes, after the creation of a broad technocrat government with the participation of SP and DP, an opportunity has now been offered for the government to also receive a “call” by an individual who is not next to a socialist, for instance.
But what will the government say?
For four years in a row, perhaps during the years before that too, if you belonged to the opposite political side, you had no chance to enter government’s offices. But this became very accentuated during these four years. Each employee heard the Prime Minister mock the militants of the other party and they became arrogant with the others.
If you belong to the opposite side, police will not respond when you call them that your house is being set on fire. The Municipality will not come if it is notified that you have been flooded. There are even indications that the municipality’s employees may come and push you toward the catastrophe. If you’re on the opposite side, if you’re a businessman, you will never secure a tender. If you’re an NGO of the opposite side, you will never be given a project. You will not even find a place at the day care center for your child. There are plenty of cases when even the ambulance has not responded after it found out that the patient was a “gulag”.
This is how society was built during the dictatorship period and the “war of classes” and unfortunately, we have not yet overcome it. Even then, when “power belonged to people”, according to Lenin’s idea, those who had rights were only those who were close to the party. Others would be differentiated even for five kilograms of apples and for an authorization form to purchase a refrigerator. Although we’re in a democracy, people are not equal in front of their state.
This is how it is. In the past four years, a lot of “memories” came back from the period of representation according to the Party. The majority of the population remained unrepresented. The one million votes and one million slaps were false. With time, they shrank and remained less than ten thousand.
If each individual of society is represented, then nobody can encourage a nation to rise on its feet. Represented people do not come to Tirana to protest, they don’t set up a Tent and they don’t sit on the benches of the Tent. Quite the opposite: If an individual feels unrepresented, he feels that he doesn’t have a roof over his head and so, he turns into a “bomb”. It was a nation and not just a few individuals who rose in the protest. The tension that was created in the country was based on representation. The individual who was not represented in the plot planted with cannabis, in police actions, in his judicial case, in the solution of property problems, in healthcare services, and in the end, in his security.
Those who gathered in the Tent are not motivated by the principles of the Athens’ democracy or Rome’s democracy; how would they know them?! They came here to feel that they were represented. At the end of the day, for a single telephone call.
Governance (not to say democracy) has been reduced to its lowest level. The individual has come to a point where he has no more food and shelter for his children, where he feels that his life and property have been threatened; he has come to a point where if he lodges a complaint, he will be beaten at the Police station. Everything has reduced to basic things, “a telephone number”.
The great allies of the Albanian people, USA and Germany came to a critical point when they proposed the creation of a government represented by both sides. It seems that it will continue after the June 25 elections, where “the enemies”, SP and DP will govern together. At least, everyone has a telephone to call if their life is at risk.
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Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Albanian Free Press’ editorial policy
