By Andi Balla
There were two massive rallies in the span of a couple of weeks in Albania. The opposition and ruling parties decided they wanted to show their strength by bringing as many people to the streets as possible.
By various estimates, hundreds of thousands of people attended. That’s a big chunk of tiny Albania’s population.
As you may know, Albania’s government and opposition are currently caught in a political stalemate over the Socialist Party’s refusal to take its seats in Parliament unless there is a recount of roughly one third of the ballots in the summer elections.
As they wait to see who blinks first, the opposition and the ruling parties hurl harsh rhetoric at each other. And they organize rallies. (The official reasons were fighting for democracy on one side, and celebrating achieving it 19 years ago, on the other.).
It makes sense that both sides could bring about the same number of people to the streets. The Albanian population is split in half about whom they support, and the election results showed that. It’s a slim majority.
The issue is how they managed to bring so many people to the streets. In a normal democracy, the rallies would be a welcomed sign of political involvement and freedom to express oneself. There was some of that in these two rallies.
Some Albanians believe that one leader or the other will govern Albania better. Some believe the elections went well, others that they were flawed.
There is a more worrying sign in these rallies, however. There were an unusually high number of people attending on both sides that were not there simply out of conviction.
The problem is that often in Albania, a normal citizen’s livelihood, his or her job, could depend on taking sides. It could depend on showing up to rallies, especially if you work in the public sector. There are real and perceived threats among employees of public institutions that they must attend or help organize the rally of the political force that controls their institution. And that has nothing to do with freedom.
The fact remains that the public employees hired by Albanian taxpayers, apolitical folks, were being used by both sides for political purposes. The fact remains that in the Albania of 2009, your job becomes subject to political screening, whether you like it or not.
Rallies are part of democracy, and some Albanians might believe in the leaders who organize them, and the reasons they give about why thousands of people need to come out and listen to their speeches.
But in the end, if they can’t bring the people out based solely on their convictions, these rallies are not about democracy or a better, European Albania. They are not about freedom of expression. They become simply about power.
