The precedent of “automatic” rotation ended in 2009

By Ylli Pata

The fable spread yesterday about Edi Rama’s possible resignation, which enthused all the media circles opposed to him, is nothing new.

It opens once every three months for a decade now, each time with a different narrative full of fantasy. Some link it to domestic developments, but many to foreign ones. Everyone remembers the Nepal case, Maduro or Ramaduro, the helicopter-transfer legends, even the demonstrations with the German flag in front of the prime minister’s office.

The issue of the rotation of power in Albania, in a situation where Edi Rama has been in government for 13 years straight, has become a frustrating issue for a good part of public opinion.

Frustrating with good reason, because according to them there is no reason for this majority to continue; the country needs a rotation. The normal question — rotation to whom — generally makes the representatives of this part of public opinion nervous. “Let Rama go, then we’ll see!” they say, more or less. Which looks exactly like Shefqet Musaraj’s poem about Balli Kombëtar: “Let’s take the reins, then we’ll figure it out!”

Yet beyond this frustration, which has turned into a collective anxiety of this part of public opinion, the fact is that this fable — that is, rotation coming as a political recycling — is not new.

It was used, even misused, in the past, when it also worked. Namely in 2005, when Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party came to power, 8 years after the 1997 cataclysm.

For the left, this was the end of the world, but on the other hand the socialist political leaders themselves had misused the discourse of the bogeyman.

The only one who predicted Sali Berisha’s return was Edi Rama, in his 2003 race for chairman of the Socialist Party. But wherever he went to PS branch meetings, the socialists mocked him, since they thought it was a parody version. Which is what actually happened.

It happened, it must be said, also as a result of the push of some international circles, who encouraged that rotation as a political solution, as a democratic movement of an allied country.

It didn’t take long, and these circles saw they were dealing with an uncontrolled development, which used power without having a real majority, but used — with “not quite orthodox” methods — the division within the left. Meanwhile Gërdec and January 21 were the points that spilled the glass. Not to mention the chemical weapons and the 2016 justice reform, which then brought the 2021 Non Grata.

All these events are nothing but a limited chronicle of the failure of the axiom that had spread as an urban legend in Albania — that the DP stays in power for eight years and the SP for eight years.

Today we face a more evolved political reality, an alternative! Which doesn’t need to seek division among the socialists, but the votes of the electorate in general. With a program, leadership — that is, a face — and a completely new and renewed political narration.

Otherwise, rotation is worthless; it’s recycling.