Flooding the state!

2026-01-09 19:13:00, Aktualitet Grigels Muçollari

Flooding the state!

The recent floods in Albania are not just natural events. They are the most brutal reflection of a state that has lost its fundamental function: prevention, protection and responsibility. Water entered homes, businesses and agricultural land, but in reality what has long been flooded is the state itself.

In concrete terms, the failure is both technical and political. The dams, which were supposed to be the first line of defense, ended up out of action precisely where the investments were announced with great fanfare and billed at high prices. The case of the Durrës dam is not an isolated incident, but a symbol of a pattern: public money spent, projects inaugurated, but infrastructure that fails at the moment of testing. This is the classic definition of structural corruption — not just the theft of funds, but the deliberate destruction of state capacity.

The flood takes on an even broader meaning. The successive accusations against the deputy prime minister, ministers and heads of public institutions for corrupt affairs, clientelistic investments and abuse of public funds are like unstoppable flows of water that break the dams of public trust. When the executive branch piles up accusations, but at the same time protects itself politically, the state is not drowning from the outside, but from within.

The prime minister’s refusal to allow parliament to consider lifting the immunity of a key government figure is another critical moment in this flood. Parliament, which should be the institution of checks and balances, is reduced to decorum. When the law stops before the government, but does not stop before the citizen, then we no longer have a rule of law, but personal power.
At the same time, the economy is shrinking in vital sectors: agriculture is hit by floods and the lack of real support, small businesses are closing under fiscal pressure and informality is increasing, while emigration continues to empty the country of its workforce and professionals. This is another form of flood: not with water, but with insecurity and poverty.
The situation becomes even more alarming when the state loses control over its digital infrastructure. The accusations against the AKSHI, where state servers and data are in private hands, constitute a strategic risk. When public information, records, and critical systems are not under direct state control, the line between incompetence and capture by private or criminal interests becomes blurred. This is another level of deluge: the violation of institutional sovereignty.

All these phenomena are interconnected. Physical floods are the result of corrupt investments; corruption is the result of a lack of control; a lack of control comes from the capture of institutions; and the capture of institutions produces a state that no longer serves its citizens, but itself.
The “flood of the state” is not an exaggerated metaphor. It describes a reality where corruption, the arrogance of power, and economic weakness merge into a single crisis. And like any flood, if timely intervention is not made to build real dams — legal, institutional, and moral — the damage is not temporary. It becomes structural.
I fear that it already is.
Consequently, the overthrow is necessary to escape the flood.