Tirana Times
TIRANA, Dec. 8 – It was the students’ protest 20 years ago that served as the basis for the fall of the communist regime, luckily without any death.
Their protest obliged the then-communist government and the communist party to declare political pluralism.
Twenty years after Albania is a much different country, now claiming to be a young democracy as a NATO member and one hoping to become one day also a European Union member.
Making Albania like all Europe was the main logo of the students 20 years ago this day.
Is the tiny Balkan country one like that?
Yes, in many aspects of the social, political and economic life.
People are free to speak (though often their voice is either left unheard or violated).
Albanians have so many political parties, more than 50, though only half a dozen of them are really active.
Albania has a free press with so many newspapers, television and radio stations (likely more in per capita compared to any other country.)
Albania holds elections every four years for the parliament and the local authorities (which are still to reach democratic western standards.)
Albania’s economy is private with so many companies now strengthened over the years.
There are many other things and items to mention positively.
But Albania has also so many shortcomings, many of them consequences of the communist regime mentality still existing in the minds of many people who run the country.
Holding democratic elections, improving the judiciary and raising the capacities of the administration may be among the main priorities of the country.
In all these developments one has noticed all forms of democratic processes, including some extremist actions that have threatened the country’s life in certain moments (like the almost anarchy in 1997 after the fall of the false pyramid investment schemes.)
Albanians are used to holding protests, which are almost all of them, or 99 percent of them, politically motivated.
Albanians are so eager to satisfy their political leaders and take part in street protests for political reasons.
There are so rare protests for the lack of power or water supply (common problems during all these years), for the lack of a school or cutting of their wood, for not keeping their street clean, or for difficulties to pay the power and water consume, for the daily problems, their own problems.
If you here such complaints in any protests, it will definitely be part of a political protest of a political party exploiting them for their political goals.
And where are the students?
We are reading in one or two newspapers that students of the health faculty are protesting for the lack of the textbooks, using old ones that cannot be applied any more. They want a different management of their curricula and also some practice during the school years to, at least, learn in practice how to use the main tools a doctor keeps in hands.
Not much coverage was given to them and not many people were interested in following that.
Why? Why are Albanians becoming so passive, non-existent?
Fred Abrahams, special advisor of the Human Rights Watch, wrote during the last days an article at the Huffington Post in the Untied States, “Albania Could Use Some Revolutionary Spirit.”
Abrahams has been with the Soros Foundation working for some years in Albania and he knows the situation quite well, including many contacts he still has.
For the moment one could immediately say and ironize him for mentioning the ‘revolutionary spirit’ belonging to the old communist regime.
That reaction could really be the concrete example of the existence of the communist mentality in the minds of so many Albanians, unluckily still running the country.
Yes, Albania needs more social spirit, wants the people to really take care of themselves, to trust but also check the politicians they have elected and if not satisfied protests are of different forms to keep democracy alive.
“The defeat of hard-line communism has led to an allergic rejection of all things communal; democracy means the right to do as one wants. The students do not need to confront the police or stage another hunger strike. But a waft of revolutionary spirit would invigorate and improve the frantically pluralistic and wildly individualistic scene that the students helped create two decades ago,” that is what Abrahams writes.
That is so true and the country, students and the people need to rethink their life.
