The protest should worry more about the diaspora’s arrival than about its obstruction

By Bjorn Runa

On the 105th day of the protest, the diaspora is expected to arrive again in Tirana, accompanied by the usual claim that it is being blocked at the border. It is one of those statements thrown into the public from time to time, speaking as much to the protesters’ need to look persecuted in the eyes of the public as to the fact that, for all the support, the diaspora has not given their cause much of a hand. So its mere participation in the Tirana protest is no longer enough. It must be something the government tries to stop but ultimately cannot.

Indeed, the images circulating online these past two days show long lines of vehicles waiting at the border in Montenegro. Today I was watching the video of one of them, with a Lamborghini overtaking the long column of waiting cars while boasting that no one could stop him from coming to the protest. In his mind this was probably a way of showing how determined he is in the fight against the regime, but what came through most clearly in the video was his inflated self-regard, in which others must wait in line while he, who has managed to buy a Lamborghini, cannot be stopped on his way to the protest.

Watching such scenes, the protest’s anxiety that the diaspora is being blocked from coming to Albania seems rather pointless. In fact, it should worry more about what the diaspora brings to the boulevard. Some of the most repeated displays of its arrival have surfaced some of the most banal instincts: from superficial patriotism to boasting about accumulated wealth and the conviction that an expensive car automatically shows the importance of the person inside it. These are all things we have in abundance in Tirana, and it was thought that the protest, in one way or another, was also against such phenomena, because it claims to be a movement of those who do not feel heard in society. Indeed, one of the most repeated slogans of recent weeks has been “you do not represent us,” aimed at MPs seen as people whose wealth has isolated them from ordinary people’s problems, making them arrogant toward them. Apparently, though, this only applies to politicians and the rich of the local variety.

Of course, a single individual does not represent the whole diaspora, and owning an expensive car does not strip you of the right to protest, but there is a big difference between solidarity with protesters and treating them as an audience gathered there to admire your success. Can someone who feels humiliated by politicians’ privileges feel motivated by someone who overtakes him in line simply because he has a more expensive car? What exactly does the diaspora offer here, other than changing the identity of the one who looks down on you only because he is richer than you?

The government must answer for the inequalities that brought people out onto the boulevard, and the protest cannot afford to reproduce the same inequalities. Those who have spent their whole lives waiting in line do not need another man overtaking them in a Lambo to tell them that he will now represent them.