MP Marjana Koçeku has reacted again on social media, where she published an open letter to Prime Minister Edi Rama. In this message, she expresses support for the protesters, accuses the government of a lack of dialogue with citizens, and calls on the head of the executive to listen to their voice, describing resignation as an act in the common good.
Full message:
Të lidhura
None found
Mr. Prime Minister,
This afternoon is expected to mark the 24th day of a protest in which tens of thousands of citizens have gathered in the square, angry and exhausted by the indifference, intoxication, and delirium of power of the country’s entire political class.
Citizens have presented you with a series of demands, but instead of the confrontation and accountability that fall to you as the leader of the state, you are unfairly trying to insult them, weigh on them emotionally, and denigrate them, even though they are exercising a fundamental constitutional right: protest.
The Albanian people retain deep gratitude toward the United States, and this protest is not at all against them, but against the internal system built over decades on fear, servility, and the alienation of Albanian identity. It is a system in which, despite the initial illusions I had, I did not find myself, at least not as part of a particular party.
From the moment I physically became part of this protest, I understood even more clearly that Albanians are finally considering their homeland as a homeland; they are seeing the country as a place where one can live and to which one should return, not as a land from which one must leave. I admire their resilience, because this shows that we have people to serve.
The Albanian people are trying to move from subjugation to sovereignty in order to express their obstructed will and, after so many years, to make the transition from personal conscience to collective consciousness, which carries deep and pure within itself all three dimensions of human time.
Mr. Prime Minister, the younger generation, to which I also belong, is not afraid like the generation of our parents, which often accepted humiliation and was blackmailed by the need to survive. This generation is free of complexes and seeks to express its energy and freedom without becoming a tool or a shadow of power.
My entry into politics was a decision for which I needed time to find the courage to take that step, but leaving the formation you have built, which today is in a deep intoxication of power, required even more time until I found the strength to make it a reality.
Albanians are tired and are no longer inspired either by you or by the old political caste. This has led you into a deep crisis of legitimacy, one that can hardly be overcome without consequences or concessions.
The constructions, about which citizens have never been asked, cast a shadow over both the land and the sky. The deniers and repeat deniers of this country have turned it into a mixture without identity, and it seems as though they are elbowing one another aside. Therefore, people no longer rightly believe in the development you proclaim.
Contempt for the revolt of ordinary people and for causes such as those of Rrjoll, Zvërnec, and many others over the years has built up a structure of discontent that is unlikely to collapse anymore.
For those asking why I did not speak earlier, the answer is simple. The leaders of the group I left behind did not accept differing opinions, debate, or moral sensitivity. In fact, by every means, they try to suffocate even the smallest effort to be different or to hold a free opinion.
I am convinced that secure realities for the future cannot be built on alienating worldviews. Therefore, the time has come to move from building 3D projects to building another, more authentic worldview, which this protest is sowing and leading in the best possible way; a worldview in which a stranger is not treated better than your own, a mindset that gives Albanians the right to be masters in their own home.
The enemies of our country have almost never been external, as you are trying to portray them, but mainly internal, well hidden, wearing ties, and possessed by the frenzy of power and detachment from reality.
Mr. Prime Minister, development is good only when it serves its own people and keeps them in well-being, without forcing them to become emigrants in foreign lands and tourists in their own country. Otherwise, this development becomes violent if it forces you to forget who you are and to whom you belong.
Albanians do not necessarily need what is foreign; they need realism and development that respects nature, property, our identity, our values, and above all development that does not deny the principle of solidarity with the generations to come. They need people who represent them with the conscience of tomorrow.
As an MP, I have seen it up close and I am convinced that a large part of the political elite no longer has faith in you either, but the courage to admit it and to act may still require a little more time.
People can embrace a certain ideology only to the extent that it guarantees them an individual perspective and collective security. Today, in Albania, both are seriously faltering.
Day after day, the Albanians in the square and those supporting them from afar are sending the message that they are not a forbidden people and that they no longer accept remaining forgotten. This protest is a raging river flowing across the skin of history and no longer accepts being treated as though it cannot be seen and heard.
The disagreement between the state and the nation brings serious moral violations, alliances without principles, blind hedonism, and in the end a new peak of evil: the mockery of Albania. And this poker game being played with our country is blindly leading us through the night toward a collision with the iceberg.
You still have time to stop this. Repeal the clientelist and preferential laws, think about the Republic and the Albanian people, who have seen and experienced enough and now deserve to be respected and protected.
I know that many bells are ringing inside you, but I also know that the prime minister is not God’s vicar. If the divine never seeks legitimacy, the prime minister seeks it periodically. And if you want legitimacy to return to you, then listen to the square. Listen to the sigh of your people.
It is not the duty of power to make a person happy; its duty is to create the conditions in which that person can be happy. The protesters are neither libertines nor Jacobins; they are conscious Albanians who have decided to return to their country, themselves, and their dignity.
If I truly wished you well, I would wish you less power and more nobility. This can be achieved only if you carry out your final political act: resignation.
I know that this decision requires moral sensitivity, political nobility, and above all patriotism. I hope you find these virtues as soon as possible, so that you may leave with dignity the office that Albanians gave you. For this, there is still time.
The square is calling out with the voice of the Eumenides. It is giving power the opportunity to establish justice. Therefore, as an MP of Parliament and as a citizen of the Republic of Albania, I call on you to act in the name of the common good; in the name of what is, and not of what you think is; to reward Albanians with your resignation.
In the last messages we exchanged, you told me that I would remain alone and without faith, and that not even the people of the mountains would pay any attention to me anymore. But I am not afraid to walk alone; I am and will remain Marjana of the mountains, and now I have crossed the fence, with no return.
