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Leaders bring out certain political situations and circumstances

2025-10-04 14:00:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

In politics, it is often said that leaders are born that way.

That somewhere, in a corner of the world or history, a man grows up with the "star" of leadership on his forehead until history opens the door for him and he enters with the naturalness of being predestined by fate.

In fact, it doesn't work that way. Leaders are not born, they are conceived and created by crises, clashes, debate, the revolt of society, the need of society to be truly led and the lack of other alternatives. Certain political situations shape characters, until a figure appears on the political scene who dares to take on the burden and responsibility of leadership.

In normal societies and democracies, leaders are not “necessary.” When everything is going smoothly, institutions are functioning, and people are busy with daily life, politics is not leadership and an end in itself, nor even a springboard for enrichment.

But when the rules are broken, the system is shaken, and faith in justice, the economy, or the state collapses, then a figure is needed to take responsibility. It is there, amidst chaos and uncertainty, that history tests character.

History has clear examples of how the right moment, responsibility and taking responsibility create the right leader. Churchill would have remained an average politician without World War II. He became a leader because London was burning and someone was needed who would not give up. Mandela might have remained a forgotten activist without Apartheid. He became a leader because an entire nation had lost its dignity.

Even in consolidated democracies, the leader faces challenges that shake the conscience of society and is tested in crises.

Albania, more than leaders, has had politicians who seek power to use it.

Because it oscillates in a hybrid and dysfunctional democracy, in a permanent state of crisis, where everything is an emergency and politics does not take responsibility before society, but only power over it. That is why we have a majority of manipulators, opportunists, masters of political survival and propaganda.

If we were to talk about the optimal conditions for responsible leadership, in Albania we find them in abundance: poverty, corruption, insecurity, lack of justice, mass emigration, lack of hope, arrogance of government, and a moral vacuum of the opposition.

These are the situations that in normal places would give rise to a figure who raises his head, who speaks honestly, and who gives direction to a weary people.

What is missing is something essential: the civic response that would force politics to produce leaders. Because leadership is not only a personal will, but also a reflection of a society that demands more. As long as Albanian society accepts the status quo and revolves around the country, it will be led by people who know how to talk about leadership, but not act as such, while politics will produce the same people with different names.

That they will turn every crisis into a spectacle with the government doing its propaganda and the opposition making noise and probably its opposition.

And when the country reaches a point where it can no longer tolerate the farce of power without responsibility, someone will emerge who does not seek to rule, but to lead. Until then, we will have politics/ CNA