By Alfred Peza
One day after he came back from his long summer holidays, Lulzim Basha issued a statement about the European Day for the Commemoration of the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. This status which was distributed by his personal Facebook account, accounts for his first political act of his second term in office as leader of the DP. His posting was not only a serious one, but it also had facts. It was a posting worthy of starting the new political season well. This would be the idea that any foreign tourist who is spending holidays in Albania, would create. Tourists who have arrived in the country for the first time and have never heard about the history of the 27 years of pluralism and the DP.
If these newly arrived tourists had someone who would explain the fable of the leader of our opposition, then that person should explain them that this fable is similar to the one of every leader in the history of humanity, who believes that life on earth, states, political parties, electoral systems and democracy were born on the day that they were elected to lead us. Prior to this, nothing has existed, nothing has happened and that they are not responsible for many things that the political party or the institution that they lead, have done or haven’t done in the past. This way, they insult the intelligence of each one of us who has lived during this period. A clear sign that Lulzim Basha has learned nothing from history. Its seems that even the future doesn’t promise us anything through him.
Enzo Biagi, a renowned Italian journalist and author of many books, among which, “Lubjanka”, has warned many years ago about the risk that our society ran by not condemning crimes of Stalinism. The journalist not only had predicted that nobody would be arrested, judged or punished for these monstrous crimes, but also the fact that nobody would repent on them. It’s been ten years now that Biagi has passed away, therefore it was impossible for him to predict that such mistakes continue to be made even today by our political leaders, giving rise to other phenomena.
Only five days ago, an opinion poll carried out by EBRD dubbed “Life in transition” showed that today, “31% of Albanians prefer an authoritarian governing system over a democratic one”. This study, which includes 29 countries and the figures of the study, shows that the average in other former communist countries similar to us who prefer the communist regime is 28%. Meanwhile, this average in Western European countries is 10% or three times smaller than Albania. This means that three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are still many people who are nostalgic about the past. I was expecting and was very hopeful that this study would be read as it should have been read by the leader of DP, given that his political force was born in the name of the war against communism. There’s very little sincerity and coherence, to say the least, in the last posting of the DP leader.
First, Lulzim Basha can never exempt himself from the history of the Democratic Party, which he has been leading for more than four years now and where he has been a senior official in the past 12-13 years.
Secondly, he would be credible if he mentioned the responsibility of the DP and his personal responsibility, because this party has been in power for 13 years or 50% of its existence during the pluralist period of the country.
Third, what he says about “lives that were lost and destroyed by Albanian Stalinism are a serious accusation against our society, which never fully condemned the murderers and the communist criminals and never seriously reflected against the ideology and communist mentality” are true. But the question that arises after this is: Where were you, Lulzim?! What about your predecessor, what is his responsibility and what did he do about this?
Fourthly, “it is painful that we still don’t have a true monument for the victims of communism and we still don’t have a true history of the crimes of communism”, Basha writes. Who is the leader of today’s opposition requesting this from? Why didn’t he build it in the four years that he served as mayor of Tirana? Does he have any platforms, strategy or project for this in the future? Or are they just words given that today, something should have been said?
Fifthly, the commemoration in this European day was not only for the victims of Stalinism, but also for the victims of Nazism. Then, why doesn’t the leader of DP write anything about the victims of Nazism?! Or do we come to another discussion here? To the division of “our” victims and “their” victims? And this is done based on a miserable philosophy that the victims of Nazism, who are the anti-fascists and the martyrs of the National Liberation War belong to the left and their commemoration must be made by the SP and the victims of Stalinism belong to the right wing, meaning, the DP. How sad! And to think that the leader of our opposition is the representative of a generation which was 15 or 16 years old when the system changed. A fact that assumes that it was still not infected by the communism mentality, of the division of things by the principle “you’re either with us or against us, there’s no middle way”!
Lastly, under the Marxist philosophy, pupils and students were taught at school that “the bourgeoisie right without the bourgeoisie” exists in the communist system too. Let us not become even more serious than we have been up until today with the process of decommunistization of the country, by making the unforgivable mistake of applying in our capitalist system “the communist right without communism”.
There are 364 other days in a year to see how serious the leader of the Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha is when he says that “we cannot escape our responsibility to condemn communism, not only as a moral obligation toward its victims, but also as the only way to create a true free and democratic society. This is the unfinished mission”. Because words are blown by the wind, as they have done in the past 27 years, while actions remain. So far, it’s not that he has excelled by turning words into actions.
Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Albanian Free Press’ editorial policy
