– Gjon Bruçi –
The press conference between our Prime Minister Edi Rama and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni was one of the rarest and most antique conferences held in our country over the last 30 years. I titled the article “‘Half-Truths’ of Prime Minister Rama” because not only in his two encounters with journalists from RAI-3, but also in the press conference with his colleague Meloni, the refrain of “half-truths” accompanied the entire discourse of his speech. In all three cases, the Prime Minister used this phrase to stop, and possibly to neutralize, the direct accusations from the Italian press regarding the “narco-state of Albania” and Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The accused, in this case, never explained what these “half-truths” are, leaving us citizens, when comparing them to “half-lies,” to determine which way the scales of his behaviour and actions tip. According to Rama, these “half-truths” from the Italian press were mud thrown at Albania and Albanians, something that upset him more than the accusations directed at him personally. But even this conclusion of the Prime Minister was a “half-truth,” or more accurately, a “half-lie,” and even a complete lie. The muck and mud of Italian journalism and its European counterparts were never aimed at Albania and Albanians as a country and people, but at its government, which is led by a specific individual. Because, in no case can countries and their peoples be called “narco-countries” and “narco-peoples.” These epithets are “enjoyed” by states (governments) and their leaders.
If a survey were conducted among citizens of the middle and lower classes in both urban and rural areas, excluding the “patronage workers” and the “sick militants” of political parties, the overwhelming majority of respondents would say that the current state, even if not yet a “narco-state,” has at least successfully entered this “glorious path” of its degeneration. Gather the daily trafficking of drugs and people; the murders and rapes; the thefts and abuses, etc., and you will find that in most cases, among the characters of ordinary and organized crime, you will find administrators of various levels of power and the state, even within its violent organs. Once you gather the overview of these “activities,” then name it as you wish, whether “narco-state” or candidate for “narco-state,” a precise and deserved adjective for the “facade democracy” of the capitalist system in our country.
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Since his rise to the head of the Socialist Party (PS) and shortly thereafter to the head of the government, Prime Minister Rama has exhibited open contradictions that clash with the political and economic program of the party he leads and the government he commands. Although he accepted, and even fought to lead a left-wing party like the PS, he had no problem, after gaining power with left-wing votes, in drawing on his chest the two-finger symbol of the political opponent with the initials of the Democratic Party (PD). Not only did he emblazon the PD symbol, which represents the Albanian right, on shirts of various colours — sometimes pink, sometimes purple and finally black — but he also etched it into his heart, reviving a nostalgia he had kept hidden within.
Here are just a few steps he took in this conceptual leap for the political entity he leads and consequently for the executive branch he has commanded for 11 years. At the outset, during the struggle to “seize” the leadership of the PD, our current Prime Minister, along with the late Ardian Klosi, articulated, wrote and published the Nazi slogan: “Communists on the rope, veterans on the dagger,” a slogan they never justified or annulled. When he took (or was given) the leadership of the PS and secured the governmental chair, he launched the second open slogan, saying: “I am beyond the left and the right,” a slogan that, although it heralded fascism, was overlooked by naive and interest-driven socialists as a club joke.
A few years later, at the inauguration of the bust of Mithat Frashëri, leader of the Balli Kombëtar, at the hills of the Tirana lake, he told the veterans of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War (LANÇ) to “bow their heads” because Mithat’s work was better understood by someone who studied painting than by those who fought with arms against the nazi-fascists and their collaborators. Shortly thereafter, when the former “Qemal Stafa” National Stadium was demolished to become the “Arena,” the name of the famous communist Qemal Stafa, who was killed by the fascists and Ballists on May 5, 1942, also evaporated.
Continuing his activities against the LANÇ and its veterans, he added the statue of Queen Geraldine, the queen mother, to the statue of the fleeing King Ahmet Zogu in the central boulevard of the capital, which was initially placed there by Sali Berisha. And so on, and so forth.
I mentioned only a few aspects related to LANÇ because if we delve into economic, social, cultural, educational, healthcare fields, etc., the controversial and anti-national actions of Rama, leader of the PS and simultaneously Prime Minister of the country, are numerous, requiring a lawyer’s or bureaucrat’s registry to compile them all.
But the latest and freshest “feat” in this field of playing “dominoes” with our people’s history and culture is the phrase he uttered about Albanian-Italian relations at the press conference with Prime Minister Meloni in Shëngjin. In this conference, Prime Minister Rama, among other things, evoked the ancient friendship with the Italians and the tradition of the Albanian saying “the house belongs to god and the guest,” a tradition that led Albanians to take in and care for the Italians left behind after the occupying war in our country until they returned safely to their homeland. He gave the same example for sheltering the Jews, who were sought “with a torch in hand” by the German occupiers. These two episodes are entirely true. In fact, with all occupiers, when they have been defeated and left stranded, Albanians have behaved this way.
But Rama forgets, or more accurately wants to forget, that this happens when it comes to peoples, not politicians and officials who force the people into aggressive and occupying wars against other peoples and countries. And “thanks” to these politicians, Italy has twice invaded our country with arms.
Pretending to reinforce this “ancient tradition” of our people, Rama goes a bit further, telling us a “half-truth,” this time not from the Italian press, but from his own mental and conceptual pocket:
“We,” says Rama, speaking about the relations between Italy and Albania, “are very similar, a similarity that sometimes makes you think: Why don’t we unite our two countries into one, and thus unite our political parties, our journalists… and have a big celebration?!”…
This remark was not made during a social lunch with two or three people but right at the press conference with Prime Minister Meloni, in the presence of journalists from both countries. Under these circumstances, can this be considered a “half-truth,” as Rama says?
The black attire chosen by both prime ministers for the joint press conference, the common Italian language, and the jokes Rama made about “uniting the two countries” reminded one of the distant April 12, 1939. On that shameful date, the newly-formed Albanian government under the fascist heel, with Prime Minister Shefqet Bey Vërlaci, decided to send a “special delegation” of about 50 people to present the crown of Skanderbeg to the King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia, Victor Emmanuel III, who, based on the decisions made by the Albanian Constituent Assembly, was also declared King of Albania?!
Is our Prime Minister aiming to make this “half-truth” completely true?!! May god, or rather the people, protect Albania!
(Translated from the Albanian original and first published in “Gazeta SOT” on June 8, 2024)
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