Ervin Salianj's message: Come, I'm at Mother Teresa Square tonight too

By Ervin Salianji

Today at dinner in "Mother Teresa" Square, in Tirana, the campaign for the May 11 elections officially opens. Due to a political sentence, orchestrated and signed in a judicial farce by the Prime Minister, I will not be physically there, and this is the first time I am absent. I have been in every campaign of the Democratic Party.

But I am here tonight, as a testament to the need for change. Albania must leave behind this dark 12-year chapter, where an oppressive rule was installed. The sentencing of a political opponent, for a press conference, is a shame that our country does not have to bear on its still fragile shoulders, and it must be lifted by removing the autocrat.

Edi Rama has the ability to close this as if it were an internal event. It is a violation of democracy and this is already being talked about in Strasbourg, in Brussels.

I am here tonight in the hopes that every citizen has to dispel the fear that has been introduced by a government that is maintained not by consensus or trust, but by violence, repression, penalization, and punishment.

To every young person who seeks to regain lost confidence, who is at a crossroads, who wants to stay, who aspires to a future here, where they can be fulfilled, and who deserves to have a government on their side that stimulates their entrepreneurship, or facilitates housing loans.

To every retiree who has given enough for this country, whose dignity and economy have been trampled upon by a mocking autocrat. I am with him, as we have been throughout the campaigns.

I am with every democrat who has had to fight for 12 years in a country where it has been even more difficult for him than for others, due to political hostility, but who has also tried to keep his strength, the Democratic Party, united and not allow the destruction of his only hope for change.

I am with every democrat who has been fighting for 12 years without stopping a single day, without being tempted, with that unstoppable engine that keeps faith burning.

30 days remain to materialize all this feeling, emotion, hope, revolt, dissatisfaction, aspiration, expectation, in a new order. In a government, with the people, by the people, for the people.

30 days to separate ourselves from an evil that is not only felt on everyone's skin, but whose dimensions will become clear with the transparency that change, rotation, will bring.

It is completely possible. Free yourself from anxiety and fear. Conquer the doubt within you. Rise above skepticism. Don't be what Edi Rama wants you to be, submissive.

All the panic is with the autocrat today. He seeks to disperse it, to save himself. You will see after May 11, how much of a coward he is who was brave with the state under his rule.

This transition to the next state is in everyone's hands.

Come tonight to Mother Teresa Square, and don't stop every hour, every minute until May 11th.