Protest, the difficulty of affirmation through force

2024-10-08 11:44:00, Opinione Andi Bushati

The opposition has not managed, in the fourth cycle of protests, to assert itself through violence. On Monday, October 7, the PD really managed to set fire to the portrait of Edi Rama on the facade of the SP, it really filled all the main government institutions with smoke, flames and tear gas, but it was not able to go beyond the symbolic. .

In this sense, comparing with the three previous cycles of the resumption of protests, which resumed in 2022 (after an almost three-year castration of the Basha era), this current one can be considered a failure.

When on July 7, 2022, Berisha called on people to take to the streets, the democrats longing for what they know how to do best responded impressively. At that time, when the symbols, seal and humiliation of the party, the government insisted on keeping the duo Basha - Alibeaj, this movement was considered a success. The aim was to create the impression in the public that Reestablishment was the real PD, and the response of the militants reinforced this belief.

The rallies organized to show the internationals that this country was not what they describe to the Albanians can also be considered successful. Even in the protest of December 6, 2022, the one that took place simultaneously with the summit of the prime ministers of the EU and the Western Balkans in Tirana, where an invisible hand, incited at best by hate speech, struck Sali Berisha, or even in the demonstration on February 20, five days after the visit of Secretary Blinken to Tirana, who praised Edi Rama, many people poured into the square.

Even the one that can be considered as the third cycle, which celebrated on July 11 of this year, the final merger of the Democratic Party and the transfer of almost all the deputies to the group where the voters and militants were also reached its goal. After a long ordeal, the unified PD was within its right to celebrate a month after regaining in court the seal, emblem, and flag that belonged to it.

But all three of these types of protests, regardless of the diversity of topics, had as a common thread the affirmation. Sometimes they sought to prove who was the majority in the opposition, sometimes that in this country there is a compact anti-government mass, sometimes that the direction taken, even with international support, was not the right one and to achieve this, the presence of a serious mass of participants. In the fourth cycle, the one that started this October 7, the challenge was different: it no longer had to do with affirmation, but with forceful opposition. After proving to be the only major opposition in the country, after being confirmed with nearly half a million votes, the DP wanted to be respected as such. But instead, she was faced with political imprisonment, like the process against Salianji, with seizure of lost mandates thanks to SPAK and GJKKO, as in the case of Himara, with desecration of the constitution, as in the mandate of Olta Xhaca, and full of other violated rights, such as the obstacle to setting up investigative commissions, interpellations or commissions in the assembly. And when something that belongs to you legally is grabbed unjustly, there is no other way to force. It was not the PD that chose to go to the molotov, it was the attitude towards it that imposed it as the only way.

But right here, when she tried the path of strength, she failed, and this has an explanation. It is enough to make a simple comparison between the protest organized by Rama's opposition in January 2011 and the current one. Once the SP in opposition had its millionaires who poured a lot of money necessary for the organization of such enterprises. It also had at its disposal the criminal gangs that provided the contingents that clashed with the police and pushed them back in the confrontation in front of the prime minister's office. Today's opposition is much weaker. Just as it has brought under control independent institutions, prosecutors' offices, courts or national televisions, SP has complete dominance over oligarchs as financiers and criminal gangs as executors of such events. Berisha's former expression that he will topple the government only with the democrats of Laçi and Mamurrasi now looks like a utopia. Such is the cycle of the opposition protest that just started, the one to be affirmed through force. Therefore and unlike the first, he failed. Because this regime has suffocated everything, turning into an impossible mission even the challenge through force, just like the one through the vote. The only consolation for DP may be that it is not the only loser of this situation. Such are a large part of Albanians who have been deprived of the opportunity to live in an equal system with a balance of forces./ LAPSI