The banalization of the protest and the old political elite

By Skënder Minxhozi

For a politician to stand for three and a half decades at the top of active politics and then take a trip to the US and say “I have renewed myself, we start from scratch” — this is a bitter and despairing irony, the fruit and product of an environment without rules or traffic lights like Albania. Sali Berisha’s latest trip to America has turned into an object of humor, more than an impossible mission of return. Yet within this laughable fable there is something serious, which concerns the phenomenon and not just the concrete event.

We have said until we are tired during the transition that in this country nothing disappears, it is only recycled. Fitting this logic are all the leaders of current political parties, starting with Sali Berisha, Ilir Meta and Fatmir Mediu (plus half a dozen heads of smaller parties), continuing with Edi Rama, who entered politics some seven years after them.

Today’s political elite has had its time and is showing serious signs of aging — so much so that even a complex politician like Fatos Nano is remembered first today for his willingness to resign from the high posts he held at certain moments. Emancipating acts which failed to create a consolidated culture within the Albanian ruling class.

Today we are even witnessing the opposite phenomenon to that of giving up one’s career. We see the relativization of parties in favor of consolidating and fortifying the post of party leader. Party forums have faded, internal party democracy has become a dangerous sport for whoever attempts it, and the figure of the leader is the only lighthouse showing the way. A field of sunflower seedlings following the movement of the ball of fire in the sky — that is what our political parties are today.

This reading is now easy to make. It is a long time lived by millions of Albanians during the transition. A tunnel which in the ’90s we thought was short, but which we bitterly note has turned out longer than the Channel Tunnel.

In this environment, a civic protest contesting this blocked reality would be welcome as a gust of fresh air in a room with closed windows. A goal in principle understandable and normal for a country that has knocked on Europe’s doors, where the perpetuity of politicians is a red line that is not accepted.

The flag-bearers’ protest formally had and still has this visionary claim. Just as it did not have, and is unlikely ever to have, a concrete formula for how to open the windows of the closed room of Albanian politics. Instead of seeking, selecting, encouraging and bringing into its ranks brains, dignity, untainted names and open-minded politicians of tomorrow, this protest has over the months fallen into the murky rut of verbal violence, anarchy, banality and violent behavior. A small crowd of spiteful and sometimes vulgar people who think Rama can be toppled with eggs and social media posts — this is the only daily, repeated story of the once large, peaceful and indeed very dangerous protest for the old ruling elite. Those who promised the future cannot even orient themselves in the present!

Colleague Ilir Demalia had, a few days ago, the somewhat adventurous idea — knowing his positioning toward the protest — of going and joining the protesters. He found them gathered at the foot of Rama’s office, insulting the country’s prime minister with the most banal words the Albanian language knows. Men, women, young men and women (surely quite a few minors too) listened to the chorus of protesters screaming insults with the vocabulary of a crowd of ultras in a provincial stadium. Demalia “paid” on the spot and without delay for his act, receiving his share of colorful insults — but this speaks less of the individual pride this insulting crowd wounded, and more of the gradual and unstoppable degeneration of this movement, which seeks to be emancipating and becomes destructive, which seeks to encourage participation and provokes departure and abandonment, which attempts to endanger political power and in fact consolidates it by rendering itself a non-factor with the banality it radiates every day.

It is no exaggeration to say today that every government and prime minister would pray for such a protest at the doors of power. A protest that does not threaten you with its “hot” anger and folklore, but stands there as a democratic decoration you can sell in any European chancellery as proof of the country’s emancipation!

Meanwhile, as it fails to take power, the protest is giving Edi Rama the unexpected luxury of soothing his own pride by watching hundreds of people curse him every day at the doors of his office — but their rifles are wooden and their bullets are blanks. There is nothing worse than a movement that sets out to make history and sees itself as the decoration of the power it has claimed for 100 days to topple!