All the president’s men

In a short editorial of this week, one of the most influential Albanian dailies, continued to repeat “imagine if Nano became President,” “imagine if he did get the votes”, “imagine if he did secure the approval ofŢ, imagine this about Nano, imagine that! Indeed Fatos Nano has few chances to become President, thus the imaginary feelings are almost justified. Nevertheless his shrewd political approach deserves credit and with a bit of luck he could as well succeeds leaving not much room to imagination.
Everyone seems to be in love with Nano all of a sudden. In the weekend, former strong opponent Nikolle Lesi held his hand. In Nano’s own words, “Lesi showed traditional highlander generosity in accepting the auto-critical approach towards the past.” If Lesi finds it reasonable to extend this generosity to the present as well, Nano might find himself with a couple of votes more from the Demo-Christian Party. Indeed, coming out of the SP’s office meeting, where Mr. Nano received a cold shower, one might think that he does not stand a real chance. But did you notice Mr. Nano tremble? Did he sound insecure; did he say anything about refusal? No, on the contrary he said they had resumed the partnership. Is it important what he says? It has always been.
But why talk about trifles when Mr. Nano seems to have the most important and decisive support of “the one” and only man who can command a majority of votes in the parliament, the Prime Minister himself.
Lets take a look at the other competitors: The candidate of the majority is the head of DP’s parliamentary group and a very popular figure Bamir Topi.
In the last meetings of the right-wing coalition currently in power, though one by one all important names are withdrawing the de-facto support for Bamir Topi, reserving him a place only in the appraisals ledger.
Current president Alfred Moisiu was backed to a certain extent by Edi Rama and received positive feedback for his work by President Bush as well during is visit on June10. Moisiu though does not stand good chances because the DP has repeatedly voiced their disapproval of him with Parliament Head and DP’s number two, Jozefina Topalli leading a staunch word-battle against him.
Unless we consider Albanians love for surprises, which can perfectly well turn out to be the decisive factors, others candidates can pose no real challenge to Nano’s name.
It is true that Nano does not enjoy the support of the opposition and has never been considered a consensual option. Nevertheless he does have many supporters within the SP, which would rather ruin their political career than abandon him and his interests. This was obvious in the Congress of the Sp in April where the tension between supporters of current SP leader Edi Rama and former leader Nano grew to a boiling point.
To most actors of the civil society, media analysts and all sorts of other paper-mongers, the return of l’enfant terrible has seemed as impossible, unthinkable, abhorring and a list of other synonyms of indignation.
Nevertheless, like all political games, Nano’s one has a sound reasonable expectation supporting it, a good calculation of either numbers of media effects (after all a nice presidential campaign means that he can still run the show.)
Hence the scenario where a Prime Minister accused of setting Albania in flames in 1997 and another one who fled it the year after when the crowds challenged his authority are going to have an absolute grip on Albanian politics is scary despite being with a lit bit of luck, justƩmaginary.