A story of corruption, not of love

By Bledi Kajsiu

There is an effort, especially in pro-government media — but not only there — to dwell on the pink dimension of the scandal involving SHISH chief Vlora Hyseni and defendant Ergys Agasi.

The tendency is a product both of media interest in sexual scoops and of the machismo that dominates our media, which identifies women with emotion, irrationality and weakness, and men with rationality, steadiness and strength.

From here it is easy to understand why many media outlets and analysts have fixated on the “love affair” between the SHISH chief and Agasi, or on presenting the latter as a gigolo. The macho logic explains Ms. Hyseni’s downfall as the product of her emotional weakness, in full conformity with our social stereotypes about women’s “weakness.”

Such an explanation also serves the authorities well, because it shifts attention from Ms. Hyseni’s corruption to her love life. Of little importance in this explanation is the fact that even if the “love story” existed, its source is money and power far more than feeling.

It is hard to believe that the SHISH chief would have fallen in love with Ergys Agasi had he not had the power, wealth and underworld connections that his relationship with Prime Minister Rama had enabled. These are the reasons that explain Hyseni’s close ties to Agasi, whether they were social, sexual or platonic.

There are plenty of more handsome and younger, and far more honest, men than Ergys Agasi in our public administration and in SHISH who are simple civil servants, with whom Hyseni could have fallen in love in a romantic — though not ethical or legal — way, to fulfill her human and spiritual needs.

But you can count on your fingers the likes of Agasi who control and steal millions of euros in tenders, who have powerful ties to the criminal world and who are at the same time friends of Prime Minister Rama, with whom they drink expensive wine in the heart of power. All these facts, which the prime minister claims not to have known, were clear to Vlora Hyseni as SHISH chief.

She knew very well the wealth, power, underworld ties and closeness of Agasi to the prime minister, and it is precisely for this that she attached herself to him. It was not Agasi’s mole-like appearance, his intellectual charm or his electrifying personality that made the SHISH chief “fall in love.” It was simply power, money and strong ties to Prime Minister Rama and the criminal world that transformed Gysi into an object of adoration.

This is not a love story but one of corruption. The tendency of media and analysts to portray Ergys Agasi as a romantic gigolo hides the key to his success as the mole who opened the channels of communication between power, crime and corruption. The fact that high state officials of our state adore such moles is evidence of corruption, not of romantic sensibility.

Thus the Vlora Hyseni case is the syndrome of a public administration populated by administrative and political banality that has reduced human existence to the worship of power, money and the “strongmen.”

In fact, it is a broad syndrome of our society in general, which has long placed the worship of force and money above every other value, such as honesty, creativity or principles. In many segments of our society, including art and the media, there exists implicit admiration and respect for the model of the “strongmen” — the drug traffickers who have enriched themselves dizzyingly.

But it is shocking to see the consolidation of this phenomenon at the top of the Albanian state, which should have been its antibodies. The upper levels of the state should serve as a moral and principled compass for the ordinary citizen, not degrade below the moral level of the population.

This is precisely what shocks us in Ms. Hyseni’s case. Her moral and principled compass was below the level of the ordinary citizen whom she had a duty to protect and guide.

The adoration or “love” of the SHISH chief for an ordinary “strongman,” a mole of crime and corruption, for whom she appears to have violated the fundamental principles of the Albanian state, showed that the lady in question had entirely lost her moral and principled compass in her activity at the helm of SHISH.

Unfortunately, it is the same phenomenon that repeats itself constantly in every scandal of Prime Minister Edi Rama’s governance and high administration. We could replace Vlora Hyseni’s face with that of Belinda Balluku, Arben Ahmetaj, Evis Berberi, Erjon Veliaj or the 5D directors in the Municipality of Tirana.

The pantheon of corruption in the Rama administration is enriched every day with new faces and new scandals. Naturally, at its head stands the prime minister himself, who dressed a mole like Ergys Agasi with power, respect and influence, turning corrupt banality into the modus operandi of his administration.

In such a world there is no space for principles, love, romanticism or human sensibility. Love can degenerate into corruption, and even into banality. But banality and corruption never produce love.

So the Hyseni–Agasi story is not a pink story between two romantic characters sacrificing everything for love à la Romeo and Juliet. It is a dark and banal story of the corruption of a high official with an incriminated person.

Its script was written by the Master Artist Rama. He is the true author of this story, because both its protagonists, Gysi and Vlora, are entirely his creations.