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By Andi Bushati/ The illusion of a generation that believed that democracy can no longer be stolen

2023-12-28 16:35:00, Opinione Andi Bushati

By Andi Bushati/ The illusion of a generation that believed that democracy can

Analyst Andi Bushati

For a long time, my generation, that of the 20-30-year-olds of the 90s, grew up with the illusion of a new world, where the return to dictatorial regimes seemed impossible. In the east, the Berlin wall had collapsed and the disintegration of the "Empire of Evil" was continuing. In the West, Fukuyama's last theory of history prevailed, which preached the triumph of liberalism and democracy.

Even in Albania, people were seized by the fever to act freely. They ran after the desire to profit from the magic and invisible hand of the market. Someone would set up a kiosk, another would turn the ground floor room into a shop, while a third, more daring, would run to Turkey to import from there Hilal chocolates or chewing gum, which there was no longer a need to store in a glass of water for the next day.

Those who had no talent for business engaged in trade unions, associations or political parties that were created at a frenetic pace. Everywhere on the sidewalks flyers or newspapers were sold that no longer restrained the word, from the "Eros" of a former waiter transformed into a local Larry Flint, to Our Time, which turned into a monument of opposition to irresponsibility .

Everyone believed in the unstoppable triumph of freedom to the point that even the attempts of the first Sali Berisha to build a vertical and autocratic model met with strong resistance. Gazidede's SHIK and Agim Shehu's police, although they wanted to instill fear, openly defied each other. A few months after the actual overthrow of communism, on March 22, the SP, despite having the burden of the legacy of the past on its shoulders, received the mandate to correct the new government in the local elections.

Most of the DP's founding figures broke away from it to create an even more right-wing and liberal force. The arrest of the opposition leader, Fatos Nano, was accompanied by a powerful and unstoppable protest in the streets of Tirana. Berisha was defeated by plebiscite in the referendum on the new constitution. The opposition was ready to bleed in the squares to defend the stolen vote of May '96.

The popular revolt of '97 bloodily killed any attempt to turn back the clock of history and seemed to deal the final blow to anyone who would dream of unlimited personal power. The myth that democracy was inalienable became stronger than ever.

But, three decades later, the generation of great change is today that of 50-60 year olds with lost illusions. The magic of the invisible hand of the market has now been replaced by the concentration of national wealth in a few hands of oligarchs. Freedom of speech has been killed by the big televisions that have channeled over 90% of the audience to the personal interests of the 5 families. No one mobilizes anymore to protest the theft of the vote. People await with indifference the arrests of opponents against the regime.

Poplar judges have been replaced by "our children's heroes", who, unlike the first ones, do not manage to have even the minimum of controversial dignity of Zef Broz. Albania has rapidly slipped towards a country with a party state, from which business, media, justice, civil society, local government, universities and even sports federations are directed. And all this is happening in the deep slumber of society.

The question is how did we get here? How we slowly and silently accepted the loss one after another of the values ??achieved? How did we continue to fulfill the dream that what we had won could not be taken away from us, while it was stolen for days from just under our noses?

A simplified explanation of this return to monism could be made by justifying it with the catapulting here to our side of an evil genius like Edi Rama. Even peoples with a much more ancient democratic tradition than ours, such as the Germans, Italians or Spaniards, have not been able to resist the dictatorships of the 20th century that fell on their heads. So we also have nothing more to do, it could be an excuse.

Another justification, again somewhat alibic, is that unlike Berisha's first attempt, Rama's regime is not based on violence but on money. He does not attack you, but corrupts you. He does not imprison your friend by your side, but recruits him to oppose him. He doesn't run into a boisterous international who raises his voice about things going wrong, but tries to discover in him the vices of the potential McGonigal. So basically, it doesn't hit you, it divides you, it doesn't kill you, it atomizes you, until the ability to raise common causes is destroyed. This new type of rule, unlike the authoritarian attempt of the years '92-'97, is not similar to the classic one, which Albanians knew during half a century of communism. So, as a result, we probably have a harder time perceiving it and have antibodies that are more unaccustomed to dealing with it.

Another hypothesis could be that of the western countries' interest in democratic values ??fading. Already convinced that they are not an easily exportable commodity, like the US, like the EU, they have probably decided to bet on strong leaders who guarantee stability, regardless of the means by which they achieve this goal. One thing is a fact, after the beginning of the 2000s, the interest of the diplomats of the allied countries in undoing those values, which they were supposed to protect, has been increasingly faint.

But, on the other hand, all these arguments, individually, or even all of them, resemble the excuses of someone who is looking for the guilty, for something that was stolen before their eyes. Even my generation, even all of us, have been robbed of what we remembered they had won forever, the liberal society. We are being served in a new form, the same old monism. Therefore this plunder, this bitter end of illusion, is not worth explaining either by random incidents or by temporary phenomena, however strong their influence may have been.

For what we are experiencing, the main responsibility rests on all of us who lived with the illusion that democracy is a gift that cannot be taken back. And rushing forward with our eyes closed, we slowly forgot that this society had never had the opportunity to raise a strong immune system against evil. All, all, the Albanian state has lived a few years without dictatorship, at the beginning of the last century, and two decades of transition chaos between 1997-2017. A drop of water in the ocean, when you think of the dark night of lack of freedom.

But could we take democracy and liberal society for granted when we still had undeveloped antibodies for their protection?

The fact that we did not address this dilemma more densely and more forcefully makes us responsible today. The fact that we did not turn on the alarm signal when our parties began to turn into personal or family toys, when the role of other powers was fading to nothing, when we changed the essence of the 1998 constitution, which was conceived as a dam against the concentration of powers , to replace it with the 2008 changes, definitely makes us guilty.

The blind belief that evil does not happen, since what has been achieved is irreversible, tempted us to create all the conditions, so that when someone appeared to announce that he wanted "only the pan", we would have done it for him. already the road ready. The illusion that this could not happen made us ignore the fact that we were living in a country without a drop of democratic tradition and completely unarmed to defend it.

The fact of what Rama did next, how his opponents behaved towards him, or how the geopolitical arena changed, are much more insignificant than this ignorance of the lack of tradition. This was the big mistake of this generation that still boasts that it won the revolution, while in three decades it took every wrong step to lose it. At the high price of killing democracy.