– Gjon Bruçi –
The so-called “democratic” transition, which has been ongoing for three and a half decades has a conglomerate of political and state figures who will remain in history as the “modern barbarians of Albania’s destruction and degeneration.” Champions of this destructive and degenerative “conglomerate” were and remain two: Sali Berisha and Edi Rama. Not simply due to their longevity in politics and power, but more so because of their dark and permanent deeds.
More than once, I have called the first, Berisha, the destroyer of Albania, and the second, Rama, its degrader. Contrary to this definition, a friend of mine on social media once opposed me, saying that “something that is destroyed cannot be degenerated.” The reasoning of my friend, who is surely a socialist, and who wants to address controversial epithets only towards Sali, I countered with a simple example from my family in the village. At the head of the meadow next to the house, we had the foundations and some segments of the wall of the tower built by my grandfather back in 1880. The place where the tower had been, because of the stones of the foundations and its half-walls, could not be mowed as we did with the rest of the meadow. This gave us the opportunity, even we the third generation after the grandfather, to know the location of the tower’s foundations that he once raised.
Around the ’60s and ’70s of the 20th century, we sold the stones from the tower’s foundations for “five lek” to a fellow villager who wanted to build a new tower. Five or ten years after this “deal,” the place where the tower had been, lacking the stones, became level, and we started mowing the grass without obstruction over the former foundations. Now that more than four decades have passed, even I, who lived several years in the village, am unable to precisely point out where the foundations of our tower, raised 140 years ago, were. As for my children, it is needless to say that they have no idea.
This is what has happened and is happening with the “Lords of the Manor” of Albania’s transition, particularly with the two characters mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Only in this case, it is not about one or two towers, but about all the towers and the Homeland of the Albanians.
These characters we mentioned above do not come from ancient times, but are our fellow countrymen of “modern times,” who acted and are acting in broad daylight for the destruction and degeneration of our lands; while we, the citizens, although we constitute the majority and are the true sovereigns of the country, sit and watch, moving our heads left and right as if we were in the first stage of Darwinian evolution of the monkey.
To be specific, let us mention some of the “deeds” and “calamities” of these two characters, whose stories are known to all. Berisha, whom some of us have called “Nero,” was and remains the character of burning and destroying Albania. It is said that the Roman Nero burned Rome to rebuild it more beautifully, whereas “our Nero” Berisha carried out the mission of the Euro-Atlantic foreigners, who had to demolish the small country on the Adriatic coast which, thanks to the resistance and diplomacy of the great Albanian Enver Hoxha, had become a symbol of resistance against imperialism and was successfully building socialism. The calamity of ’97, the coup of ’98, the “atomic bomb” of Gërdec and January 21, 2011 are the “inaugural” stations of all Berisha’s crimes, which are difficult to group into a single dossier of his anti-people and anti-Albanian activity.
The baton of this anti-people and anti-Albanian activity of Sali was taken up by Edi Rama. No one knows exactly who brought this “personality,” who, from an emigrant on the banks of the Seine in Paris, where it is said he sold degraded icons and paintings, came to the head of the Ministry of Culture, then to the head of the largest municipality in the country, and in 2013 to the head of the Socialist Party and the Albanian government. Edi Rama, it seems, had read the saying of the right-wing Russian politician Zhirinovsky, who in the early ’90s, speaking about the fate of Albania and the Albanians, said: “Albanians, before modernizing, must degenerate…!”
Edi Rama had mastered this slogan at the highest level and has implemented and continues to implement it at that same level. After destroying even those national assets that had escaped the “first and second Sali,” he turned to degenerating the life and activities of state organs and the entire society. The tactic of today’s international imperialism is the globalization of countries and peoples, more precisely integrating them into a “pen” where traditions, customs, habits and vices blend, making it easier for the international oligarchy to control their destinies. In service of this goal, we have the “reforms,” more accurately the “refirms” that have so far brought down education, culture, healthcare, agriculture, industry, the military, the police, and all the material, wealth and human assets of the Albanians. Thanks to these anti-national reformist policies, the population of Albania has been halved. The most vital part in terms of age and knowledge has emigrated, and in Albania only the pensioners remain, whom the state cannot even manage to pay their pensions. On the other hand, although Albanians have emigrated and continue to emigrate in large numbers, the number of inhabitants in our country has not decreased. Why? Because there can be no empty space on the densely populated surface of the globe. Instead of the Albanians who have left and continue to leave their lands in the villages and cities every day, hundreds and thousands of Italians, Czechs, Bulgarians, Russians, Serbs, Poles, etc., buy houses and become residents on our lands. Not to mention the Afro-Asian immigrants who head towards Europe and, thanks to the Rama-Meloni agreement, end up in Shëngjin and Gjadër of Lezha, or the thousands of Filipinos who will be brought in to cover the shortage of Albanian labour. This population movement will dictate a new demography of the Albanian population in a few years, and future parliaments, besides elderly Albanians, will also have parliamentary groups with minority lists, which will soon become the majority.
But the most acute and dangerous degeneration comes from corruption, crime and immorality. These three perverse “assets” have gripped culture, justice, the economy, society, and above all, the state administration, which is paid to fight crime and corruption. Note: After three and a half decades of “democracy,” when we expect to enter Europe, the state is forced to carry out a nationwide police operation, like the operations of the organs of defence in the early post-Liberation years when reactionary bands roamed our country. In those years, the People’s Defence Brigade, together with the simple people, managed to eliminate over 600 reactionary terrorist bands in the mountains of the north and south of the country. Meanwhile, today’s “democratic” state, led by Rama with his government cabinet, despite organizing a bombastic operation in 8-9 districts simultaneously, manages to capture a mere 10-15 wanted criminals, while 30-35 others “escape,” leaving SPAK with nothing. Why does this happen? Because, like the state itself, its armed wing, an army of over 16,000 police officers, has degenerated to the point where among the 10 wanted criminals for corruption and crimes, 4 or 5 are from the ranks of the police, including its own officers.
Edi Rama and his colleague Berisha know very well that if there were a clean government administration and a fair and accurate court, there would be no rampant corruption or organized crime. But these two “assets” that uphold a state are neither for Sali nor for Rama. They began their careers with corruption and are inevitably patrons of crime and corruption.
Only the people can solve this evil. Sooner or later, this will happen. “And then,” Enver Hoxha once said, “accounts will be settled properly!”
(Translated from the Albanian original and first published in “Gazeta SOT” on May 22, 2024)
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