Has anything changed after the tragic death of two children in Durrës?
Written by: Ben Andoni
Listen to the terrifying roar of engines and the unbridled honking of car horns in the cities, the accidents, the violators and you will have the right answer. Has anything changed in the opposition's discourse and addressing real concerns? You have the answer in the language of communication of Mr. Berisha and others. Has the cult of Mr. Rama and the public concern about the stagnation of many things in the country weakened? You have the answer in our daily lives and in that stagnation that Albanians usually encounter. Is Kosovo changing anything with the union of Vjosa Osmani, the former president, with the LDK? To think, the president with an excellent legal education who decreed many documents, the Constitutional Court of Kosovo turned a lot of crap on her and showed that she was more of a notary of Mr. Kurti's government, which she is now attacking with full force...
What should the Albanians of Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and beyond really believe in their respective countries?! Why is the state increasingly unequal with its citizens? Why was the Kosovo transit prime minister Kurti so calm next to Mickovski?! Why can't the DP make normal choices, but clings to anyone who tells them they are doing wrong?! Why is wealth not shared with a more comprehensive logic in Kosovo and Albania, which are states administered by Albanians? No answer. An indicator that can illustrate this fact is what happens in Albania regarding the distribution of bank deposits. About 7% of the population (approximately 12,000 individuals) own over 93% of the total assets in deposits! This shows a very deep division between a minority that accumulates capital and the rest that is left with the rest. Wealth taxes and other corrective mechanisms fail to effectively reduce inequality, allowing capital to grow faster than wages. Add here the Inequality of the Labor Market: The large difference in income reflects this indicator in the labor market, where only a small minority works in sectors with high productivity, while over 1/5 of the population at the bottom of the pyramid manages to collect only about 7.5% of the national income. And if you add the reality of assets, you will really feel a stronger polarization. Meanwhile, it is a fact that Albania, thanks to historical European conjunctures, is climbing with a sure step towards integration. However, when you listen to the discourse of the main politicians of the two camps and especially Rama and Berisha, you are shocked. Politics is trying to eclipse everything with its protagonism. "The world is terrified! 'Negotiations were blocked', 'negotiations were blocked', 'negotiations were blocked', 'negotiations were blocked', 'Germany left, Germany entered'. How is the explanation made? The explanation is made first by us talking to you and then by you talking to them, to everyone. People are focusing on this issue, because they want us to achieve what they all gave us that support for. To make the European Union passport a reality for every Albanian. Then, for this to happen, we need strength," said Prime Minister Rama a short while ago. They are not mentioning the mountain of insults that the opposition leader is making against him and the fact of integration.
This entire technical path towards integration has a major challenge within the country and it is called the "healing" of hope. Our greatest wound, to which we surrender. If we take it in a pyramidal form, if we do not believe in anything positive, how can we transform ourselves and our society, along with the system we have built.
The biggest barrier is fatalism, which follows the Albanian individual and encounters him everywhere. Reality feeds it, with poor public services, with the large exodus of people, with the unbridled prices and the superiority that some businesses that start with modest positions and culminate (!), with the weight that the simple individual has. For anthropologists, the fatalism of Albanians (we constantly express it in the century of the existence of the Albanian state) is almost known and well-accepted: It is justified by reality, where even the best things often remain on the streets, where the ordinary Albanian to a large extent does not adapt to the most normal urban rules. Perhaps fatalism can also be that iron armor to protect oneself and the responsibility to delegate with the paradoxical words: Let what needs to be done be done! We will all have an end.
Far from it, it seems that our fatality is not without basis. Except for communism and the monarchy, where there was some thought about authority and accountability, for the most part, we relied on them for tricks to get the system into power. We have proven to be masters of creating nepotism, and past systems, along with today's, have turned its scheme into an art. Meritocracy is so rare that in the few moments when it happens, you truly have a moment of almost divine vision. The author of these lines remembers the moment when one of our greatest athletes in our entire history, Agim Fagu, was honored by former President Meta. In his speech, historian Pëllumb Xhufi, his friend, would say: "There are some people who honor the very appreciation they receive, by bringing up the case of Fagu. These moments are rare. Meritocracy is giving up before nepotism and cronyism, just as justice remains selective and cynical. The stock of 150.000 files is the best argument. The tragic fate of many good Albanians and often professionals makes others react simply: "This country is not done" to save themselves from the next disappointment. The current system often hits those who are correct. This is the reason why Albanian society no longer holds officials accountable (after all, "we have nothing to do with it"); individuals corrupt or find shortcuts (after all, "that's what everyone does"); we turn away from good examples (holy books and world heritage are full of exemplary stories, where people do not seek reward) and we do not dedicate ourselves to the community. Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope, and this is related to the younger generation, who, thanks to free movement and the exemplary examples of the internet, are realizing that they must avoid and ridicule this fatality of their grandparents, parents, and older siblings. Ultimately, the system does not come from the gods, it is one that we all produce. Our idealists of the early last century understood it well, but they could not change the essence. While Father Anton Harapi, a keen observer, would write in his time: "The leaders of the peoples have made a great mistake: they have forgotten that man as man, and the people as people, can do as much without air and food as they can without goodness and justice; they beat themselves up, remembering that the problems of human life can only be developed with formulas, without any spiritual values; they show their ignorance if they do not remember that evil is not fought only with evil and that war is not worth fighting for. ("The Light's Gate", XX, 1936). And yet, there is still a chance for the healing of hope, because in the end, what else is left for us? "We always hope, and in all things it is better to hope than to despair." These words of Goethe are like a justification for the Albanian being, because hope is divine and comes to peoples in moments like the one that 21st century Albania is going through, filled with dilemmas, stigma, and desires. The hope of Albanians wounded by centuries can be healed in this very social atmosphere... (Homo Albanicus)
t7 live
