TIRANA, April 12 – Following a series of popular protests related to social issues, a number of experts and political analysts have raised alarm bells over the Albanian public growing frustration and lack of faith in institutions, seeing parallels between the country’s current situation and what led people to take the streets during the 1997 riots.
The protests that organically arose as a response to the unelaborated tax on the Nation Highway and which led Kukes inhabitants to set toll collection boxes on fire, clash with the police and risk prison time — 11 people are in jail awaiting trial — are, according to many, an indicator that violence has become the only language the Albanian political elite understands.
According to Fatos Lubonja, journalist and analyst, Nation Highway demonstrators’ reaction built up as a response to the ‘fascist’ and ‘oligarch’ regime Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party government has been practicing since 2013.
“What are people to do when they see their PM, who won their vote by promising better living standards and lower taxes, raises the bar of taxes and fines as many times he pleases to share with a fistful of oligarchs?” Lubonja rhetorically asks in an analysis of the latest developments in the country.
In this context, he also mentions a number of other broken promises by the Rama government for personal purposes — the alleged theft of pieces of coastal land, the approval of construction permits in the capital despite electoral promises saying there would be ‘zero constructions’, the relocation of the national theatre to build a high-rise commercial complex, etc.
According to Lubonja, the country’s government has failed, purposefully, to respond to democratic objections coming from the people it governs.
While the first democratic reaction would be to speak up against the use of state for personal interests, Lubonja says the answer coming from Rama and his oligarchs against these claims was “denigration and verbal violence.”
In addition, the second natural reaction of reporting law violations to the state’s judicial institutions is rendered worthless as, according to him, the police and judicial system are controlled by Rama.
Neither peaceful protests nor people’s desire to leave the country in hordes have signaled Rama either, according to Lubonja, that people are leaving the country to escape “the bombardations of their greed.”
“It is clear the consequences of violence are always dangerous, because violence breeds violence, but based on what was above-mentioned responsible for the Kukes violence is the violence of the Prime Minister and of his collaborators and oligarchs,” Lubonja concludes.
Gjergj Erebara, in an article for Balkan Insight, adds to Lubonja’s argument by noting that Kukes, the area from which demonstrators mainly came, has never seen a breakdown of order and law until this occasion.
“Therefore, it is hard to see the use of violence by the protesters as completely unjustified,” Erebara writes.
Similarly, the government’s claims that it was the opposition sparking up the violent protests might be partly true, however Erebara says the opposition, which is not trusted more than the government at this point according to polls, is unable to organize a protest out of nothing.
“Television images from the protest showed scored of old people throwing rocks at the police. The violence received widespread applause on social media. There was a general welcome for putting the government ‘in its place’ and widespread condemnation of a greed of a bunch of businessmen with political connections that are more and more known as ‘oligarchs’,” Erebara writes.
And, according to him and others, this is worrying, as it points to the increasing lack of trust that dialogue, or even electing a new government, can change things in the country and a following inclination to find refuge in other means.
The year 1997, also known as the Albanian unrest in response to the country’s Pyramid crisis, was sparked by Ponzi scheme failures perceived by many as the outcome of governmental inability, corruption and greed. In this context, Albanians took to arms in 1997, toppled the government and in the following months allowed chaos and lawlessness to rule and kill more than 2,000 people.
Now, a number of experts see chaos arising as a real possibility in this situation.
Many instances over the last months where exasperated people have shown to be capable to use desperate means to communicate their needs to the government can only make one wonder if the only effective way left for people to be heard in Albania will lead to history repeating itself.
