By Skënder Minxhozi
To have a coffee in the center of Tirana two days before the elections and not realize that there’s a campaign going on, if you don’t have a TV screen in front of you; to travel to the beach and not see on your way to Durres no faces of candidates or party leaders in billboards on the side of the highway; to open your door in the morning and only find pizza or supermarket leaflets and not messages to vote this or that party; to walk on the side of Lana river and not see a single billboard with electoral messages; to turn on your TV in the evening and not see a debate between politicians, but only accusations that politicians make to the media or vice versa, to plan summer holidays without even caring about the fate of the elections; to gladly see how rallies, which in the past were accompanied with shouting, have been replaced by small meetings where politicians only speak; to see how the majority, opposition and the middle party (SMI) have all come together for the first time inside a government and not in their respective positions; to see how the historical man of these campaigns, former Prime Minister Berisha, refuses any contact with the media, in order not to interfere with the campaign of his successor; to see how his main opponent, the head of one of the largest parties, talks about the clothes and not the program of his opponent, while the latter suddenly forgets all the threats against him in the Tent and only talks about the economy; to be surprised how a third one, who up until yesterday was part of the government (and today he has been elected President), but accuses the government as if had been part of that government not even a single day–all of this long enumeration of circumstances, situations, important or not, somehow sums up the paradox and the uniqueness of an Albanian campaign which is coming to an end.
We have reached the last station of electoral process which we can hardly see in the years to come, but which we have certainly not seen before. Everyone part of the government, nobody in opposition and vice-versa! Quite a “drôle election” (bizarre elections) was the definition of a former exponent of today’s opposition, who borrowed an expression of the Second World War.
But no war is expected to take place on 25 June, because all the bombs that were activated a month ago, were deactivated overnight. And this was as much surreal and surprising as the solution that it produced.
From May to June, Albanians lived maximum tension, followed by the removal of the Tent, Meta’s election as president, his departure from the leadership of SMI and a little later, his exit from the scheme of the solution of the crisis. In a month, we saw how two eternal foes could become friends and unimaginable joint travelers in the near future. If God created the world in seven days, Edi Rama and Lulzim Basha, two people who obviously have more “restricted” powers than the Omnipotent, did their small Albanian miracle in less time. They solved the annoying disputes of the Tent, which remained in place for three months, they agreed on the government, elections (and eventually, on what follows them), they expelled Ilir Meta and all of his colleagues belonging to small parties and shaped a quiet election campaign, free of stress, which Albanians seem to have been enjoying from day one until the last day.
The paradigm of the elections in Albania has always had several components inside of it. Threatened candidates, ruined meetings, aggressive media, inflamed rhetoric where the opponent was often threatened with his life, intervention of the state and his violent apparatus in the election process, the dirty game of the CEC and public media in favor of one or the other, numerous traps to prevent the voting process, the counting of ballots and the announcement of the result. All of these endemic problems of the Albanian elections have always accompanied our electoral processes. Fortunately, Albania, its political class, its institutions, public opinion and the media, are all issuing signs of a gradual normalization, as far as elections are concerned. The past two elections have been much better than the previous ones and June 25 also has the premise to generate good elections.
By accepting the weight and the effect of the “cosmic joke” of the 17 May, which calmed the waters between government and opposition, we must also consider the fact that this sudden truce came as a result of positive growing pressure which had lasted several years, coming from all sides, for more emancipation, normality, dialogue, ability for compromise and to put an end to an extreme political war. It’s been a while that Albanian politics has been hearing this constant “shouting” about the need for a fresh start, for another method and behavior, for another register of communication and action. Rama and Basha were perhaps forced to act like this by coincidence and opposite circumstances, but their agreement which produced the campaign that we saw, doesn’t seem to be the fruit of a coincidence or fate.
The country is getting ready for an important milestone of development. The exit from the tiresome tunnel of transition, the gradual approach with the rich club of the continent and the rules and signs that it imposes on the way to Brussels, the reform in the justice system and the gradual normalized functioning of the state and institutions, urge everyone toward another approach, vision and behavior. We’re still far from the moment when our political class and society are fully aware of the turn that Albania needs after more than quarter of a century since it separated from communism. Perhaps this campaign, in spite of its specifics and ugly sides that it manifested, could bring after September, a government which will aim for the launch of accession talks, big electoral, economic and administrative reforms. As far as the “pan” and the “steering wheel” are concerned, they will still be there. We’re just hopeful that there will be less temptation and greed to touch them, although we know that human nature changes very slowly…
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