The Democratic Party needs a duel with Rama, not an Ogert or Ogerta from its own ranks

2025-10-05 12:29:00, Opinione Alfred Lela

The Democratic Party needs a duel with Rama, not an Ogert or Ogerta from its own

The race for the municipality of Tirana is not, in fact, about governing the city, nor is it a challenge to show who has the best alternative in this branch of local government in Albania, the largest in the country.

It is a race to dismantle Edi Rama, because it is a challenge against him, against overpowering, autocratic dictatorship, the animalistic political lust to control every corner of every power in the country.

Anyone who sees this as a competition of cleaning, traffic, chairs on the sidewalks, and other nonsense, is doing nothing but allowing Edi Rama to further extend his paw and philosophy over the capital and Albania.

It is, therefore, a battle of political and urban philosophy, of polity more than policy, of political design more than urban design.

Having said that, without wanting to offend anyone, it is not a battle for any of the names presented so far.

Because, all the candidates who have expressed their desire, self-sacrifice, or even those who have withdrawn, would not face Ogerta Manastirliu, but Edi Rama.

In this sense, the Democratic Party needs to return to where it once was. In 2003, when it ran against Rama himself, Spartak Ngjela, at that time one of the people close to Berisha, but not a 'loyalist', and one of the eloquent of the opposition. Not to the Advocate, let's be clear, but to a similar one in public profile, who fights Rama through Edi Rama, from the recesses of his consciousness and subconsciousness, of the past and the present.

This profile, better than anyone, is fulfilled by Fatos Lubonja.

Lubonja is, of course, more than that. In a Flat Society, which Edi Rama has fought hard to assemble in Albania, he is one of the very few remaining reliefs.

He has prison, resistance, and survival against dictatorship in his life curriculum, he has the battle of '97 against Sali Berisha and the right, and for almost 2 decades he has been fighting the authoritarian archetype of Edi Rama, once his friend.

In this sense, he is a candidate of transversal resistance and the horizontal city, and the Democratic Party, if it wants to be honest with itself, has no similar one in its ranks.

Lubonja's candidacy is not a confrontation with Manastirliu, but a counter-candidacy to Rama. Lubonja defeats Rama because he can let the public know, through the depth and truth of the contrast, who Edi Rama really is.

Others will be swallowed by the vacuum of meanness created by Rama himself and his propaganda machine 'we are not the best, but there is no one better than us', or 'we are all the same, but at least I am entertaining'.

The Democratic Party, with Lubonja, comes out of its own ranks, but enters the city. I can clearly see hundreds of lips pursed in dissatisfaction from the Democrats, but the political context is such that the paradigm cannot be anything other than 'if the DP cannot win, the second best thing is for someone to defeat Edi Rama'.

As for public communication, which is also the concern of the undersigned, Lubonja does not need to be packaged, branded, or communicated. He is a trusted public voice, who speaks for both the leftists, the grays, and the democrats, with whom he has been sharing the anti-Rama battle for a decade.

In the fatal conditions of the short time for this confrontation, this goes without saying.

Lubonja is the right candidate, even though the situation of the government and the SP in Tirana, after Veliaj's imprisonment, after 5D, after the incinerators, is exactly what he has described for years. His old theory of '2 gangs', where he had in mind the two big parties, has fallen, because now there is only 1 Gang. As a citizen and intellectual, it is his duty and honor to engage against the Unigang in power.

Even if he doesn't win the mayorship, the contrast he will provide will be the most accurate portrait of Edi Rama and a telegram about the end of his rule.

What is required, therefore, is not an ogre or an ogre for Rama's Ogerta, but an anti-Rama, someone who makes the duel seem equal and winnable.

The opposition in Tirana needs a duel, not a group war game.