Publicist Rexhep Shahu harshly attacks Edi Rama: “You are the enemy”

For the 31st consecutive day, citizens have continued their protest, demanding the removal of Prime Minister Edi Rama and the resignation of the Albanian government.

Regarding this development, publicist Rexhep Shahu, in a statement to “Bota sot,” leveled strong criticism at Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, blaming him for allowing construction on the coast, selling public assets, and favoring major economic interests.

He also expressed suspicions of corruption in the granting of construction permits and personal gain from the projects.

“I’m sorry, Pasha. You are too old to impress us with senile adolescence; it is jarring, old man, you are turning into a caricature. Those who milk you tell you that you are a pedigree cow and give birth to two calves. Rest assured, you no longer inspire, you are no longer the trend, Pasha, not even for your most fervent fans. Albania does not need billionaire hotels, but hotels and buildings affordable to every person who wants our sea and our sand. We want to enjoy our wealth and our land ourselves first, and all people too. We are in the middle of the Mediterranean, its navel. Your billionaires and architects, lavishly paid by you — because you even pay dearly for the praise they give you — have plenty of deserted places with no people elsewhere in the world and other coastlines.

How and where did you get the courage to turn the strip of sand and pine forest on Albania’s magnificent coast into building land? How much were you paid to commit this outrage, to sell this state property that not even foreign occupiers touched? Why did you touch my share of the strip of sand and pines, why did you sell it? Your father did not leave it to you. Better men than you, those prime ministers, protected it. I wish the protest would order the cancellation overnight of this criminal law.

What percentage of the dollars do you take from the foreign architects to whom you give work in Albania, by ordering Albanian companies, under pressure, to pay the foreigners who do the projects? The best Albanian studios receive up to 100 euros per square meter; the friend who wants you as king gets around 200 euros per square meter. You take half, because you sign the construction permit and impose the architect. You do not take apartments for the permits you issue, you take kilograms of foreign currency. What percentage do they give you while you pretend to be honest?” he said.

Shahu further accused the government over the way, according to him, the benefits derived from natural resources such as energy, oil, and infrastructure are not distributed fairly.

He raised questions about the real profit citizens receive from these resources, claiming that the income is not returned sufficiently to the people, especially those in need.

“We all want to benefit from our resources, from our wealth, not just you and your greedy, insatiable kind. You never showed what we, as citizens of this country, gain from our wealth. Why did you never tell the Albanian citizen how much each individual earns from the electricity produced by free rainwater, the free water of rivers, from hydropower plants that have paid for themselves thousands of times over? How much money per month does an Albanian gain from the electricity of God’s water?

How much does a citizen earn per month from the country’s oil? How much does a citizen earn from the hefty toll on the Nation’s Road, which was built with our taxes and is maintained with money from the state budget? The state gives it eight million dollars a year for maintenance of a road that is damaged by almost nothing. Where does the money collected at the Kalimash toll booth go, at your border that you imposed on Kosovo?

The state of Iran, which you slander — because slander is your skill and habit — a state that lives off oil, gives every family there 60 liters of oil for free every month… To how many needy families do you provide free electricity for two light bulbs, a refrigerator, and a television?

Sell Albania completely, since we allow you to. Hold Albania hostage, since we allow you to. We who quarrel in the protest square over who among us should take your place and that of your ministers. We who are wrong when we say the square determines the government and parliament, or assembly. We who, in the competition for appearances, reduce everything and everyone to zero out of lust for power. We who measure ourselves by the morning shadow and frighten people when we deliver justice in the square, imprison, accuse, declare traitors by throwing anyone in prison, when the people do not want such rhetoric, because it reminds them of your rhetoric when you came to power with prison and handcuffs on your lips, shouting ‘prison, prison’ and jailing people who died in prison over unpaid 30-dollar electricity bills,” he added.

According to Shahu, his criticism of Rama and the government goes even further, as he accused them of manipulating the protests and of the influence of old state security structures.

At the same time, he linked those in power with corruption, PPPs, and abusive tenders, claiming that the state has been placed in the service of interconnected economic and political interests.

“Youth has energy; it is not their fault if they do not know and think they are inventing the wheel in the square, but it is their fault for not asking and for allowing themselves to be manipulated by security operatives, by the sons and grandsons of security operatives, spies and the sons of spies.

Pasha, the water in your camel seems to be running out. If the protest pressures for your demolition floor by floor, it will win quickly, tear you down brick by brick, force you to cancel one by one the evil laws, to cancel all PPPs, all abusive and criminal tenders. If the protest seeks to level you to the foundations, it cannot do so without weapons. You can only be dismantled piece by piece, as you were assembled. No one can remove you with weapons, and we do not want weapons; there are no people of weapons in the square. Nor do we want power from the barrel of a gun…

If it were about weapons, they should have been used on January 21, when you, Pasha, came to power with weapons. On that January 21, if I had been in power, you would have been arrested for organizing violence, and every man with a stick under his arm who struck police that day I would have rewarded with one bullet for every blow against a police officer with a stick. So that we would learn once and for all that police officers without weapons among armed crowds are not circus clowns for people to mock, they are not soulless beings whom the blindness of the crowd may strike; they were not birthed by a cow, but by a mother.

Pasha, even the communists, the socialist extremists, are disconnecting from you, pulling the plug on you because you have abandoned the people; you behave like a sheikh, like an oligarch, like the capo of oligarchs. You erased and destroyed the boundary between the rich man, the strongman, and the politician. You made the criminal or the strongman the boss of the rich man or businessman who works with government funds and tenders; you made the anonymous politician the bag carrier of the first two, and he raises his hand and votes for the laws you want, because he is ordered to by the crime bosses and by you, Pasha. You are a link in the chain of the mafia machine, according to the letters sent to you by those whose bags you fill with dollars.

I continue to believe and hope in the indomitable spirit of the protest, in the unity of the beautiful people who gave soul and life to Tirana’s square, who want to remove you, people who do not hate one another,” he said.

Shahu also addressed young people and protesters with a call for unity beyond political divisions, underlining that change must come through votes and not through violence or hatred in the square.

He also accused the government of corruption, poor management of public projects, rising costs, and driving young people out of the country, considering this a consequence of the failure of state policies.

“The young people of the protest, of the PD, of the PS, have no reason to chew over old hatred. If it is an old system, then the youth of the PD and PS, the protest too, and its womb, its actors, its soldiers and generals, are old as well.

If they unite together, there is no empire of crime they cannot bring down. Empires of crime are not brought down with flowers, nor by hiding behind children and women at a protest, but by linking shoulder to shoulder to raise the dam of civic resistance, and then power is chosen by vote and free elections, not by cheers and the hatred of squares. No one wants the power of the squares anymore; Albania has no time for experiments.

Pasha, there is room for you too, because you will live a long time, but there is no longer room for you on the throne. Every day you remain on the throne, you deepen the abyss.

Do not invent external enemies; there are none. Do not invent enemies in mosques; the boys of the mosques are not enemies. Do not invent embassy or foundation conspiracies that support various projects for some protester. You are the enemy; all the spotlights have turned on you, and you cannot blind everyone. You are the enemy because you have allowed and approved the theft of this people, you have allowed the sidewalk to be stolen by half its width, the asphalt to be stolen by two and three centimeters, you have allowed prices two and three times higher for works compared with every country in the region. You have taken one kilometer of highway to 20 million dollars, where half is profit in the pockets of your officials.

You have emptied Albania worse than if people were fleeing a major war. The youth left, the educated left because you gave them neither work nor opportunity, while you employ patronage operatives and only proven socialists. From my own immediate family alone, you drove three engineers out of Albania. You showed hatred toward the non-socialist people. You divided the people into democrats and socialist people.

They call you a traitor in the square. I do not call you a traitor, but I do know how to say that no kind of foreign occupation would have done to our country what you have done to it. You have occupied us with the mafia state ever since you created 330 Lazarats and turned Albania into cannabis country,” he added.

“You sold yourself to us as a horse but turned out to be a mangy donkey”

In conclusion, Shahu stressed that the protest was not invented by the opposition, but that it has revived citizens’ hope.

He also opposed attempts to link the protest to the KLA or to Enverism, underlining that Kosovo’s war was won with the decisive help of the United States and NATO.

“In this plea, I wanted to remind the protest that you did not invent protest, but you revived as never before people’s hope and faith in protest from the time Edi Rama was installed in power in Shkodra with the blessing of Serbian President Tadiq.

Stories about external enemies do not work, because you, Pasha Rama, now have no greater enemy than the people and the youth of this country, who seem to be freeing themselves from fear of you.

Nor do divisive stories about Kosovars and Macedonians work, nor stories about the KLA and Enverists in this protest that knows nothing about Enver.

For the concern of the post-war brave men, let me clarify that the KLA did fight, but in Kosovo, not in Albania, and the KLA did not liberate Kosovo; it fought, but Kosovo was liberated by America and NATO. In Kumanovo, where the end of the war was signed, not a single Albanian signed, neither commander nor soldier; the victorious Americans and the defeated Serbs signed.

Without falsification, from administrative Albania around 30 people took part in the Kosovo war. Many engaged in the arms trade on backs, with horses and donkeys, and even more were declared veterans, but like every war, this one too has its lies in the tracks of our partisan war. We could not send Miladin and Dushan to Kosovo, but we have sent plenty of little Miladins and Dushans. The war they did not wage with weapons, those who wage war with words today do not make up for it with chatter and war tales in Albania and on televisions that have nothing with which to fill their screens,” Shahu concluded for “Bota sot.”