The Clocks of Tirana

By Lutfi Dervishi

The tick-tock of the next six months

Political Tirana today resembles the front desk of a large hotel, on whose wall hang six clocks, each showing a different time.

1. The square’s clock

On day 1111, the protest is still in the square and the main political demands remain the same: the Prime Minister’s resignation and a technical government.

The fact that the protest has survived the summer and entered autumn is in itself an event, but now the question is not how long it will last, but whether it will have the mass character of the first weeks. Will it produce a political mechanism for its demands, especially for the technical government?

This clock has so far shown the protest’s endurance, but in the next six months it will show the impact it will have.

2. The electoral clock

We are gradually entering the orbit of next spring’s local elections. In Tirana, the SP and the DP have almost “officialized” their candidates.

Will the protest change the campaign, its candidates and its themes, or will the approaching elections pull the protest into the parties’ gravity? Will the protest produce a political movement/formation?

3. The parliamentary clock

In Parliament, meanwhile, two mechanisms are at work that could change the playing field: electoral reform and territorial reform.

Can two such important reforms be made merely as an agreement between traditional parties, when outside Parliament a political energy has emerged that does not necessarily identify with them?

4. The justice clock

SPAK has its own calendar, its own files and its own pace, and unlike the electoral or parliamentary clock, this is a clock that is hard to wind to politics’ agenda.

An investigation, an indictment or a “new” finding in a VIP file could change the political agenda within a day. In normal times this would simply be a big media/judicial event, the scandal of the day, but in a time of protest and on the eve of elections, the political effect could be much greater.

5. The European clock

This clock runs on Brussels time, but its tick-tock is heard ever louder in Tirana. The government has promised that by the end of next year it will close the chapters, while so far of the 33 chapters only 3 have been (provisionally) closed. The pledge is that 30 will be closed by the end of next year!

One of the issues that ignited the protest — protected areas — is directly linked to Chapter 27, environment and climate change.

The government wants to race toward closing the chapters, while one of Brussels’ conditions brings it back to where the protest started, in Zvërnec. (In the integration process, over the decades we have shown from time to time a rare talent: we run toward the finish line and, along the way, manage to successfully shoot ourselves.)

6. The handless clock

This clock has no parliamentary calendar, no election date, no negotiation deadlines and no criminal procedure; it is the clock of “the thing you would never imagine” — it has no hands, but it moves…

It could be an incident, a clash, a disproportionate reaction, a wiretap, a political gaffe, an event that today does not exist in anyone’s agenda or mind. In moments of change, history has shown that it is often not what is planned that changes the dynamic and the course, but the event nobody had thought of. If I were to bet, I would circle the police as one of the factors that could raise or lower the temperature. This is the clock nobody sees, until the moment the alarm bell rings.

Which of these clocks will run fastest in the next six months, and which will impose its rhythm on the other five?

Can the country go normally toward local elections if the protest continues?

Can electoral reform be made without taking into account the energy and political demands born outside the big parties?

Can the protest demand a technical government without proposing the mechanism for how it is created?

What happens if SPAK delivers a major blow in the middle of this situation?

What happens if an unforeseen incident changes everything within a few hours?

For now, all six clocks are running simultaneously, and nobody knows which is ahead and which is behind — and above all, which clock will impose its time on the others!