– Gjon Bruçi –
The speech by Prime Minister Edi Rama, delivered to our emigrants in Milan, was a “beautiful” speech to the point of nausea. This is my conclusion after patiently listening to it until the end. After about two hours, when he concluded with the calls of “Long live Albania” and “Viva Italia,” my mind involuntarily drifted to the lengthy passages of Barleti in his history of Skanderbeg who, in trying to highlight the merits of our National Hero and Venice, used panegyric speeches (speeches with many praises).
If this speech had been made in the 15th century, it could have stood alongside Barleti’s speeches, but in the second decade of the 21st century, it hardly resonates with today’s audience. Prime Minister Rama, in his effort to show where the Albanians come from, focussed 70 per cent of his speech to our emigrants in Italy on antiquity. He started with our ancient prince, Aeneas, who after the fall of Troy, together with refugees who survived the ten-year war with the Greek city-states, crossed to Butrint, where he met his cousins, and from there travelled to Italy where he was destined by the gods to build Rome. According to the legend, after Rome, Aeneas’ sons went on to conquer the British Isles, but this part, Rama likely reserved for his next speech to our emigrants in London.
After finishing with Aeneas, our leader jumped several centuries to reach Skanderbeg, and then skipped around four centuries to make a few strokes about the fascist period, stopping at the communism of the first half of the 20th century, unloading every sin on it, which turned the Albanian people into the black sheep of the continent.
His speech of about two hours had neither historical nor dialectical analysis. The illustrations in the speech only had images of the biblical emigration of the 1990s and the disastrous year of 1997, which according to him were the “spawn” of communism and those who led the “democratic” transition before Rama came to power. Somewhere towards the end, he was forced to admit that even under his government, there have been and still are emigrations, but they were and are fewer, and have even started to fade…
By blaming “communism,” for those who do not know history it creates the impression that this system, which is deliberately named “communism” instead of “socialism,” was the cause of all the tragedies of Albanians after the death of Skanderbeg. The Prime Minister, who marvelously crafts speeches better than even Konica or Fishta, forgot to mention that the misfortunes of the Illyrians, which continued with the Arber and later the Albanians, began with the harsh Roman conquest, which, along with the sword and spear, used the well-known slogan “divide et vince” (divide and conquer), a slogan that was inherited and implemented by all subsequent conquerors of Albanian lands. Prime Minister Rama forgot to continue with the Slavic invaders of the 6th century and did not even say a word about the Ottoman invaders, a conquest that lasted four and a half centuries. When it came to the years of the two world wars (WWI and WWII), he only mentioned an episode about Mussolini without explaining his “Empire,” or Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles,” which left not only scars on our lands but also moral and mental deformities.
Our orator and Prime Minister, besides the centuries-long foreign occupations and the fragmentations done to Albanian lands by European chancelleries, should have also mentioned the Zogite monarchist period, which was a second Middle Age for the modern future of the Albanians. But he avoided this fact, perhaps for the sake of his grandfather, who is said to have been the king’s chauffeur.
All this time of 2,000 years under occupier rule and anti-people governments would naturally have negative consequences on the way of life of the Illyrians and their descendants, the Arber and later the Albanians. However, these negative consequences never shattered the basic DNA of the Albanians, which protected them from potential assimilation. Communism, or more accurately socialism, which came after the victory of the National Liberation War on the historic day November 29, 1944, had to bring all the numerous moral, physical and socio-economic elements that constitute the full limbs of a nation to the Albanians at a level equal to their DNA. And these developmental levels, thanks to the socialist system, the Albanians achieved in 50 years, while other peoples and countries needed centuries.
The biblical emigrations of the Albanians in 1990, and especially in 1997, are two moments that are abused, avoiding historical facts and circumstances, and unjustly blaming “communism,” as Rama prefers to call socialism. Today’s Prime Minister Edi Rama knows very well what caused these two mass emigrations because he was not only a participant in the “construction of socialism” and a beneficiary of its comforts but was also one of the main characters in the overthrow of that system. He knows very well that after Enver Hoxha’s death, the high nomenclature of the Party of Labour of Albania deviated from the socialist path, and through their actions and inactions, prompted the overthrow of the system.
The overthrow with propaganda, betrayal and violence of the socialist system at the end of 1990 drove three layers of society to abandon the country: the many unemployed who were left stranded after the closure of enterprises; the prisoners and persecuted who still could not believe that socialism had been overthrown and feared it could return to imprison them again; and the group that had been manipulated by propaganda of foreign agencies for five to six years, believing in the paradise that awaited them across the sea in the “free world” of the West.
The cause of the massive departure of Albanian citizens from their Homeland in the disastrous year of 1997 is even clearer. Due to the bloody situation created by Sali Berisha’s officials, who today’s Rama had made efforts to integrate, combined with the anti-Albanian propaganda for a possible civil war, citizens used all means to escape the danger. And today’s Prime Minister Rama knows this very well because after being attacked with clubs by Berisha’s men, he was forced to flee to the banks of the Seine in Paris. At least this flight of Rama to Paris was not caused by “socialism” or “communism,” which Rama had been “milking” in the capital for at least 30 years, but by Berisha’s men, who unfortunately were also his friends.
In his speech to the Albanians of Italy in Milan, Edi Rama was forced to mention some departures in the last years of his governance. But these departures or abandonments of the country he brushed over with a brief stroke, stating that they are now starting to diminish with returns to the Homeland. But statistics say otherwise. Excluding the years 1990 and 1997, the ten-year period from 2013 to 2024 of Rama’s governance is a record-breaker in emigration compared to other years and periods. And this happened and is happening simply due to the loss of hope in building a truly democratic state, which Rama is unlikely to build because he is bound by rampant crime and corruption.
Rama’s entire speech in Milan ends with a pathetic call to the emigrants in Italy, Greece and wherever they are: “Return to Albania because the situation has now improved” — Rama proclaims. “The wages of those who want to work in the tourism and service sectors have increased and are more advantageous than abroad…”!
But how many workers and craftsmen can work in tourism, trade and services? Let us say 100,000 or 200,000. But what about the thousands of others in Italy, Greece, Germany, etc. — where will they be employed when Rama and his friends have not and will not open any productive work fronts, whether in the now-devastated agriculture or in the industrial sector that has been bankrupt for a long time. The only sector where he might achieve employment, if helped by international entities, is the sector of the army, the mercenary army. But this sector is unlikely to be accepted by the Albanians.
These were roughly the arguments that made me call Rama’s speech a “beautiful speech to the point of nausea”!
(Translated from the Albanian original and first published in “Gazeta SOT” and “DITA” on May 28, 2024)
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