Virtual candidate, Veliaj

2023-05-02 17:52:00, Opinione Andi Bushati

Analyst Andi Bushati

Erion Veliaj is approaching May 14, without making any balance, without testing any promises and without giving an account for the 8 years of two mandates at the head of Tirana. He has rejected the repeated invitations of his real rival, Belind Kelliçi, going towards the conclusion of a fake and fake campaign. Everyone who has followed this process is convinced that the lack of debate between the two opponents has nothing to do with the excuses against the young politician, who allegedly owed his face to the "non woman", or the doll, whose strings move from up Saliu and Iliri.

If these were the real reasons, the mayor could have accepted a "clash" of ideas with the most structured and honest candidate, in relation to the real problems of the capital, Arlind Qorin. He could have done this, even to the face of the alleged competitors he has sponsored himself.

But no, Erion Veliaj hates accountability as a fundamental principle of democracy. And that has nothing to do with the other contestants. Anyone who has followed this campaign has witnessed the theatricality of the evening broadcasts, which have been organized in favor of him. There, the removal from the panels of all the mayor's critics, which these TVs even have as contracted analysts, has been noticed. The most zealous have gone even further, they have put as a background photo, behind his back, exactly those retouched images that Veliaj himself shares on social networks, those where the clock tower and the symbolic minaret, had not disappeared from the landscape of Tirana and where the crown of Dajti mountain was not covered yet.

This manipulation in form becomes greater if you also see the daily way of media communication with the public. All activities of Veliaj are closed to journalists. Neither cameramen nor reporters are allowed to participate in them. It is not even announced about their development. Instead of this real process, which allows the fourth power the minimum conditions to exercise its profession, TV have accepted ready-made propaganda tapes, agreeing that in exchange for favors with Veliaj, they will lie to their public. This practice is so blatant that sometimes, the signal of the activities that take place the day before, is served the next day as live by the municipality and broadcast as such simultaneously by all televisions.

Those already left in the professional file as ready-made tapes are the core of Veliaj's fake campaign. In order to continue to manipulate the public through them, the renaissance media advisers have made a great sacrifice. A while ago, Lapsi.al announced that Edi Rama was being asked to fill the mind of the most prestigious organization for press freedom on the continent, "Reporters sans frontieres", to organize a dialogue between him and local media associations. The latter set only one condition: that the renaissance should give a first sign, to give up communication with prepared chronicles. The request remained unanswered. Because money was the campaign and brainwashing was the main goal.

But the pinnacle of peaks, the one that surpasses even the licking of Topi or Klan, and even the idiotic militancy of Report, is the behavior of News 24, which tends to be called a media persecuted by the regime. She has torn down the doors for Veliaj while taking care to exterminate anyone who disrupts his work even a little. Not for nothing, in all media freedom reports there is a repeated paragraph that the relationship between the authorities and the owners who receive construction permits, has multiplied the censorship and self-censorship of journalists.

So in conclusion, Erion Veliaj has behind him in this campaign the entire army of televisions that are behaving in relation to these elections, just like those singers who support him in public, since the mayor has sponsored their concerts with our money. If only that would be enough for this electoral race to be considered neither free, nor fair, nor developed in a democratic environment.

Of course, everyone understands that the use of the media is not the only weapon that Veliaj has foreseen in his strategy to stay with the rape and the price in the office left in the shadow of the skyscrapers that are rising above it. He has in his favor the creation of a fake opposition, the existence of a rival with a "stamp", the removal of funding for the real opposition and the reduction of its commissioners and counters.

So everything is changed so that nothing changes. Therefore, he also avoids debate, spontaneity of electoral meetings and human contact with voters. He has turned into a virtual candidate because rolling up his sleeves in the real campaign would highlight the great manipulation that is happening in Tirana.