Tirana Times
TIRANA, Oct. 24 – The Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS), the Albanian Media Institute (AMI), the South-East-European Association (SOG), the Department for South-East-European History of the University of Graz, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation (FES) held last weekend an International Conference on Albania _ Twenty Years After: Rethinking Democracy and State in Albania.
Scholars and experts from within and outside Albania were invited to participate and to contribute in a process of reflection, of stock-taking, of analysis, with the objective to identify and to understand the trends and patters of the past two decades, and to draw conclusions regarding the future development of Albania.
The organizers invited all scholars and analysts who have published on, and monitored Albania’s social, political and economic transformation , such as Bernd Fischer, Nicholas Pano, Klarica de Wal, Gabriel Partos, Misha Glenny, Lotar Altman, Janusz Bugajski, Clarissa de Waal, Sabri Godo, Piro Misha, Remzi Lani, Albert Rakipi, Elez Biberaj, Gerald Knaus , Veton Surroi, Ivan vejvoda, Sonja Licht, Fatos Lubonja, Sasho Ordanovski, Rexhep Mejdani, Adrian Civici, Miranda Vickers, James Pettifer
The general session of the conference covered the main stream presentations from Nicholas Pano, prominent scholar from the University of Illinois, USA, and Bernd Fischer, professor at the Indiana University in US and a specialist in Albanian history, speaking on the achievements and also the failures of the Albanian transition.
Pano said Albania has done a lot of progress, but a lot still needs to be done. Corruption, freedom of press, minority rights, property issue, elections, organized crime, are some of the issued that according to him should be addressed by the political elite. However, he is optimist for the future of Albania. “I see the glass half full and not half empty, and I hope that the political class, if not this one the next to have the will, the courage and the civil responsibility feeling to fulfill the Albanian dream.”
Fischer considered Albania’s foreign ties as a visible achievement. Twenty years after, Albania is a reliable partner of Western countries. It is a NATO member and has signed the SAA with the EU. In domestic politics, an achievement has been the establishment of democracy and political pluralism. However, he sees as a visible failure the nature of the political parties, which still have an Enverist mentality. “The political forces are closed, lack tolerance and act as interest groups rather than in the interest of the development of society. When they come to power, the administration is lead by their militants, an issue where Albania has made no progress. The simplest thing to do is to depoliticize the state administration.” According to him, law enforcement is also a critical issue, especially in the police and the courts where there is still political influence. In the end, he added that there are also problems with freedom of press, which hinders the development of democracy.
The first and immediate answer is that twenty years after the fall of the communist regime, the state, the economy and society are still in transition. Frequently used to describe the first years of democratization, however, the term “transition” is by now reductionist, if not irrelevant in exploring the present, and useless in shedding light on the aspired future.
Can weak institutions, eroding legitimacy of political institutions, distrust of political parties, corruption and sustained political tensions be considered temporary distortions of the transition towards democracy or consolidating features of the system and Albanian political landscape?
The conference paid special attention to the situation of democracy in the tiny Balkan country twenty years after the fall of the communist regime.
Piro Misha of the Institute for Dialogue and Communication made a complete introduction of the country’s democratic problems.
Gabriel Partos was more direct in his statements mentioning that even after 20 years, Albania has the same leaders who lead the political parties and this has brought no progress in the Albanian politics.
Even though Albania is now a NATO member and under evaluation for candidate status in the EU integration process, conflict and contestation continue over the fundamental institution of democracy – free and fair elections.
Twenty years after, Albania social fabric has changed. However, the presence of a dynamic civil society as an ultimate outcome of societal modernization is yet to materialize. Civil society organizations have indisputably contributed to societal modernization, but they have not been immune to politicization, loss of independence and therefore, loss of their raison d’뵲e – to serve as government watchdogs and enable democratic, societal control of state.
The problematic and often controversial transition of Albanian politics, economy and society has been mirrored by the transition of the media to today’s rather chaotic and dysfunctional critical stage. Likewise, the opposite is true: malfunctioning within the media has mirrored itself negatively in the democratic development of the country.
The third session of the conference focused on the state functioning.
Albert Rakipi, AIIS head, talked about the state-society relations in post-communist Albania. He argued that “during communism there existed a social order and a clear designed contract between state and society. Regardless the fact that this “social contract” during communism was harshly imposed by the state and was essentially functioning based on violence and terror , a social order was in place . This kind of Social Contract between state and society was thrown away in post-communism period and yet a new contract has to be” negotiated” between Albanian post communist state and post communist society.
The conference also covered the country’s social and economic transformation, with main speeches held from Clarissa De Wal of the Cambridge University and Ardian Civici of the Tirana European University.
Adrian Cicivi, economist, was of the opinion that the transition is taking long and that one cannot say for sure if it has finally ended. “Albania is the country that brought communism to the extreme, as well as it tried to apply the most liberal economic system after the fall of communism. It moved from the extreme to the extreme.”
Foreign relations Albania has established in the last two decades were part of the discussions at the conference with contributions from Besnik Mustafaj, Veton Surroi, Ivan Vejvoda, while a special session was dedicated to the country’s European agenda with speeches and contributions from Gerald Knnaus, Sonja Licht, Lothat Altman, Ada Hueibrtgse. Presentations from regional experts covered Albania’s international relations.
Emotional memories from the Voice of America and the BBC during the fall of the communist regime made a complete coverage of the country’s past experience.
Elez Biberaj, Director of Eurasia Division in VOA, was invited to share his memories of Tirana in the beginning of the ’90s. “After the fall of the communist regime in Romania, the eyes were turned to Albania, the last communist domino. Albania was facing many social and economic problems. The question was not for how long the regime would have fallen, but when and how violent could have it been.”
The VOA supported the democratic revolution in Albania in the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s interviewing the appropriate persons from the intellectual circles of Tirana, such as the well-known writer Ismail Kadare, economists, sociologists, and new politicians. In addition to them, protagonists of the developments happening in Albania and the first pluralist politicians gave courageous interviews for the time at the VOA, taking into account the credibility that VOA had by a huge number of Albanians. He played parts of some interviews which had a great impact at that period of the time.
Misha Glenny also remembered moments from his first visits in Albania as a BBC reporter. “The streets, schools, blocks of flats and infrastructure were in very bad conditions, as well there was no regular supply with electric power or water. The elite was worried about the path the country would take after the developments in Romania, but the transformations had already started.”
Miranda Vickers, an expert on Albanian issues in London, was pessimistic. “Albania is far from being a success story.” According to her, even though Albania has undergone impressive transformation during the past 20 years, the achievements of the government are shadowed by serious problems, such as the high levels of corruption and the lack of an independent justice system. She also added that a very serious problem is also the indifferent attitude towards the pollution of environment, which is a result of the uncontrolled development by the state.
Twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the wave of change in the Eastern Block, Albania looks remarkably different. Twenty years after, the giant state produced by communism, a state that not only failed to provide basic political and public goods for citizens, but was a threat to freedom, property, life and future of Albanians, has gone forever. Also a very extreme centralized economy and an indoctrinated society has gone together with the harsh communist rule.
The international community has played an important role in Albania’s democratic processes and transformations. The role and participation of the international community in the fabric of democracy in Albania has evolved with time. For a relatively long time, Albania was undoubtedly a negotiated democracy, dominated by external actors, slowly heading towards an exit strategy. Despite appearances, Albania is far from that point and still cultivates a culture of dependency. The higher trust towards international actors evidenced in the Albanian public indicates the serious democracy and legitimacy crisis of governing institutions. Two decades on the role of outsiders in Albania is clearly related to state functionality and democracy.
Fatos Lubonja, a well-known Albanian analyst, was somewhat more pessimistic in his views about the Albanian reality 20 years after the fall of communism. According to him, political pluralism in Albania is nothing else than a hybrid of bygone communism and democracy. “Political pluralism in Albania is not a real pluralism, because the latter means dialogue, the representation of different interests and alternative programs. This is not the case for Albania, where we have two divisions of the former Labor Party which have conflictual tendencies and are against dialogue.”
The Conference sought to contribute in a process of reflection, of stock-taking, of analysis, with the objective to identify and to understand the trends and patters of the past two decades, and to draw conclusions regarding the future development of Albania. The speakers tackled a number of issues, such as the development of democracy in Albania, the transition, the social and economic transformations, the foreign policy of the country in the past 20 years, as well as the European perspective of Albania.
