Game of Chicken

Hoodlums and superpowers often engage in the game of chicken. It works something like this: two people drive their cars towards each other and the one that swerves first to avoid a collision loses. The optimal outcome is clear: you drive on as your opponent swerves. The worst outcome is presumably obvious to the readers of this article, but it is rarely so to the best competitors who egged on by sheer bravado and the cheers of the audience press on the gas pedal until that last moment.
The analogy with the (non)electoral reform is clear. After having broken every constitutional deadline on the red book that props up our wobbly state, Mr. Rama and Mr. Berisha are driving towards each other on the narrow lane of Albanian politics with a speed that has the audience gasping in horror. As panic starts spreading on the stands with ambassadors wondering how to explain the news to their capitals, businessmen wondering why no one speaks of their plight in a customs-and-energy-free land, even schoolchildren are starting to feel that all is not well. To recap yesterday’s events: the Prime Minister declared that the election timing cannot be renegotiated, while Mr. Rama demanded once again special certificates and voter lists. The opposition boycotted parliament (how’s that for a novel idea?!) and the remaining MPs risk to forget how to use the fancy electronic voting equipment in front of them due to lack of practice.
The political parties are not registering with the Central Electoral Commission. They are not naming the voting center commissioners which after the latest increase to eleven members in certain far away villages risk to find not enough room or seats for all. As an after thought, it would be pleasant poetic justice to have some of the commissioners from the small parties to sit in the snowō
The truth is that administratively speaking, the election infrastructure cannot be ready for January 20th. The VCCs have to be constituted, commissioners have to be trained, certificates distributed, voter lists posted in public spaces, the ever-active Albanians who do not find their names on the appropriate shop window must complain, their complaint must be addressed and on, and on. The devil is in the boring little steps that constitute an election. One needs not be a soothsayer to predict that the loser of this particular kind of elections will not accept them.
Much has been said in this country about the aura of omniscience that surrounds the nation’s paterfamilias. They know it all, and they act on their knowledge without any sense of limit, stepping on the gas pedalƭindful of the potholes but not of the driver speeding towards them. What is lost in the action and reaction, point and counterpoint of la vita activa, is that no one has access to all knowledge. Theists will tell us that only God does, but our spirit has locked God out and thrown away the key. Logicians will tell us that even God does not have all knowledge since the contrary would mean that there was God and then there was knowledge, which means that there was a time with no knowledge, which means that there was no God. Whatever the truth, it is clear than man can not be omniscient or omnipotent. It is when man realized this that he built a system to put brakes to his own follies.
Whoever of the drivers which will realize this first will gain the competitive advantage over the others. The world is bigger than that narrow racetrack where our heroes duel with Homeric heroism. He who swerves first will have the gratitude of the audience؈omer after all died some twelve thousand years ago.
One of Zeno’s most famous paradoxes included the turtle that always beat Achilles in a race. The reasoning goes like this: if a turtle starts running ahead of Achilles, Achilles can never beat it because no matter how fast Achilles approaches the turtle, the turtle continues to move farther ahead. From here the mathematical concept of “limit” arose. But, reality is not so asymptotic. In reality, there is always a last momentطhen Achilles’ giant steps overtake the turtle or, fatally, when the two drivers collide their cars in a massive ball of flames.