Enough with dictators, Albania!

By Ornela Çuçi

Albania no longer needs to replace the person at the head of the system. More than ever, it needs to change a system that puts one person above all the branches of power!

Anthropology, as well as Albania’s own political history, has shown us that when power in this country is concentrated in one party, that party ends up in the hands of one person… and sooner or later, that person becomes a dictator, with no limits and no checks. They think they are irreplaceable… immortal… God…
Right now, we need to close the political cycle that began with the 2008 constitutional changes. The people in that square today are not just opponents of Rama or Berisha. They also include everyone whom this prolonged Ramo-Berishist system has left out. They are people with ideas and convictions, intellectuals and political alternatives that have had no real opportunity to be represented in our two-pole, two-party system. So the question is no longer Rama or Berisha, because the problem is much bigger than either individual.

In this political graveyard, where every low-level parliamentary or government employee speaks to the screen of their own phone, at least Elisa Spiropali spoke up. We may not agree with everything she says, but her courage in speaking out, even within the party in power, should be acknowledged. Because the right to think differently must exist even within a party… even if that party has now become an ideological graveyard.

This is the time to open up the political and electoral system. All ideological alternatives must be included in parliament, or at the very least be given the opportunity to compete and be judged by the people’s votes, not by the will of party leaders…

Enough standing by as our children are being massacred. Stop supporting your bosses, who have chosen repression as the solution to the situation.

Rise up and give this country a political solution.