Voted for “Territorial Reform”!

In a lengthy social media post on Saturday, Socialist Party MP Erion Braçe responded to the debate over his vote on Territorial Reform. He explained why he took his position and answered criticism from Prime Minister Edi Rama and other public figures.

Braçe stressed that his vote was a personal choice, based on his conviction that the bill on administrative and territorial division does not amount to a genuine reform.

He denied acting under anyone else’s influence and insisted that he had betrayed neither the socialists nor the citizens who have voted for him over the years.

The socialist MP also responded to the prime minister’s remarks, calling on Rama to explain which “dirty hands” he believes may have influenced Braçe’s vote.

He rejected attempts to link his position to other people or interests and asked the prime minister not to speak on his behalf.

Braçe also stressed that, as Rama himself has said, he did not vote in favor of the prime minister, and that the matter should end there.

In his response, Braçe also criticized the way he says authority is exercised within the Socialist Party. He called it unacceptable for an MP to be told he is right, only for his position to be overruled through parliamentary group discipline.

According to Braçe, the model of “either vote or you’re out of this group” is an antidemocratic distortion within the Socialist Party. Braçe explained that he decided to remain in the parliamentary group and continue his work as an MP despite the pressure and criticism he says he has faced. He stressed that citizens gave him his mandate through their votes and that he has a moral obligation to them.

HIS RESPONSE:

Yesterday I let everyone speak about my vote early that morning. Edi Rama spoke with his usual insulting boastfulness. A second man spoke, one who wakes up at the crack of dawn to play the intellectual, professor and thinker, and ended up castrating the words that dazzle two girls. A third spoke, a clown with a sister accused of stealing money and himself playing surgeon to a troubled public service that has been robbed by the sector’s biggest oligarch, who is also his employer. Someone I value immensely also spoke, an academic and professor whose reason for being just as insulting as Edi Rama, whom he criticizes every day, I could not understand at any point. Now I have an obligation to speak, to do more than talk and to explain my vote.

First, I will not allow Edi Rama to speak about my vote and use it to launch fiery words at anyone he has in mind. He cannot do that in my name or by invoking my vote. As he acknowledged at the meeting, I did not vote for him, and he had counted that “many times,” so he should leave it there. What I ask of him, and what he owes socialists today, is to say which “dirty hands, some visible and some invisible, but now uncovered,” supposedly entangled me. Until he does that, he has time to look at himself and, if he wants, around him, but above all at himself, and to admit, not just say it because a sentence or a text calls for it, that acts and decisions that are wrong also stem from the way he thinks, the way he imposes them, the way he argues that they are the best possible option when no one else has ever been given a chance, and the way he acknowledges that others besides him are right, but not now, when it would undermine his authority, which must be beyond question. He throws it arrogantly in your face and at others as an order: “How can you be right and this whole group be wrong?” He does it to diminish, devalue and condemn you. Yet, looking at himself, he could also ask why you might be right and a majority even larger than the group might be wrong.

Second, I have not lied to anyone to be called a liar, and I have not pledged my word to anyone to be called untrustworthy. I have not betrayed any of the 25,000 people who voted for me, or the many others who voted for me over 30 years. Opposing the bill on administrative and territorial division was my choice. It came from a conviction formed without anyone’s request or pressure: that law was not, and is not, a reform, but a new drawing of the administrative territory, temporary, unstable and insufficient as a reform, just as Edi Rama himself acknowledged at the meeting of socialist MPs. So it was my position, it remains my position, and it was and remains uninfluenced by anyone who today associates it with themselves when it has nothing to do with them, especially when that person is a filthy online robot and not a resident affected by it at all.

3. Third, being an MP is a job, and Parliament is my workplace. Edi Rama drew up the lists and drew them as he wanted, in his own style, but the people gave me this job with their votes. Among the 25,000 people who thought I could do this job were, first and foremost, socialists, along with people on the left and ordinary people in this city and beyond. They all have the right to expect me to do the job. I am here, in Tirana now. Yes, I have an immense moral obligation to all those who have given me this job over the years. I have answered them humbly, modestly and gratefully every day, where they live, without ever failing to show up, defending them each time, doing good and changing life for the better for most of them. Never alone, but with them, with many comrades and friends along this path and, in particular, in these governments, for their sake. I did so this time too, and I stress this without anyone asking me to, up to the point where a job given to me by other people could be undone by that antidemocratic remodelling, built on another antidemocratic model: “either vote or you’re out of this group,” followed by “you can work with this government in this group, but not outside it.” I said it there and will keep saying it: when I am right, the force of discipline brought to bear when needed is the greatest antidemocratic distortion happening to the Socialist Party. To be right and to be told to your face, “yes, you are right,” while that right is ground down by the discipline of the rod or of the self-appointed shepherd, who ensures the wrong outcome, is unacceptable.

4. Fourth, I voted so that I would not leave but would stay and do the job. Anyone who knows this work knows very well what it is like: dependent on the majority’s vote, hard, capable of knocking you down, breaking you and tearing you apart until you can hardly breathe. But I accepted this job and cannot back down; I am not allowed to back down. Have you seen anyone else be attacked and stay, be publicly vilified and stand their ground, have people come to where they live and work while they are doing their job, and still listen and respond, at enormous personal and family cost? Have you? So I decided to stay and do the job. I know I have disrupted a plan of the kind politics has within it, a vile one, but I cannot do without this job. So, for Nesti the vote counter and the other counters, I am number 85; number 84 was there for the plan.

5. Fifth, I stayed for REFORM, which is what people voted for us to deliver, not for the map. Believe it or not, without reform that map becomes harmful, and not merely as a map. Without reform, it changes people’s lives for the worse, brutally, in the municipalities being absorbed and the central municipalities, and not merely as a map. I think REFORM OF GOVERNMENT and local government is the opportunity before us: the government should transfer substantial power, authority, functions, budget, taxes, revenues, property and the ability to use it for economic purposes, and investment opportunities to local government. This is the people’s government, the one they encounter every day, and it has greater electoral legitimacy than the authority given to government directors. It is the level of government that must serve with real power, authority, functions, budgets and policies that it can support and fund, unlike the formal and even trivial powers that, rightly, nobody exercises. It must, of course, be supervised. Is it hard to do? Yes, it is hard. Over four days I repeatedly asked: IS THE GOVERNMENT READY TO GIVE UP AND TRANSFER POWER TO THE LOCAL LEVEL? I never received a clear answer showing how far the government will go with the two constitutional principles of local government, decentralization and financial autonomy. Let me remind you: that is what people voted for us to do, not to announce a map or my vote. Do I believe in this? Yes! Do I believe it will happen? To some extent, yes, but not fully.

It is easy for Edi Rama to announce the path ahead for me or, as some around him put it, what awaits me. But I think he finds it difficult to give up power. He is in love with power, the strength and authority it brings. He has often used it for good, doing good and bringing change to this country. He has delegated it for good as well, just as he has repeatedly misused it through unworthy ministers and directors. He has made mistakes, some serious, which he must acknowledge as his own by name, not merely as the mistakes of all those who supposedly proved unworthy at his side, on his path. He must take and bear responsibility. He must show that power is not his personal property, that he does not exercise it as though it were his, but shares it as the Constitution provides, with other lawful and sovereign powers, independent and able to function fully, neither impaired nor reduced to half their strength by the majority’s disciplinary will, diluted into announcements, even those concerning a map.

That is why I stayed: to do the job I was elected to do, nothing else! I thought only of the people who have voted for me over 30 years. Most recently, those 25,000 people and those socialists who think I help them this way, by staying and fighting: I very much hope you will have the patience to watch and listen. Read beyond 25 seconds. That is enough time to hurl insults, but not enough to know and understand. I believe I have explained my vote and accounted for it. Thank you all, and I offer my deepest apologies to my people in Polican, Urë, Divbjakë, Maliq, Libohovë and everywhere in the municipalities affected by my vote.