Why I represent the Egyptian community and the Roma community on the PD-AshM candidate list and Rama's facade for minorities

By Rivelino Cuno

During all these years of Edi Rama's government, a facade of integration for the Roma and Egyptian communities has been carefully built.
But behind this facade lies the bitter truth: a policy based on international correspondence projects, on the next photo to receive funds, and on the false spectacle of public care, while the reality continues to be brutal and unchanged.

Schools remain a gateway for them, but often the learning cycles never end.

Employment is an illusion.

Housing is a luxury they don't recognize.

Health is a long road that often ends without help.

Social policies are centralized, bureaucratic, and disconnected from the reality of everyday life.

What has the Rama Government done about this?

Very little in essence, much in appearance.

A politics of rhetoric and not of transformation.

The Rama government has failed to understand that inclusion is not a word on paper, but a vital project.

It has failed to build sustainable bridges for the integration of these communities into the education system and the labor market.

It has failed to address the discriminatory structures that keep these communities in inherited poverty and turn them into a vote bank dependent on aid and local clientelism.

Policies for them are mainly simulations of European standards, which in practice are empty, partial and uncoordinated.

But what should we do?

First, we need to change paradigms. The Egyptian and Roma communities are not just “marginalized groups,” but citizens of the Republic of Albania, with the same rights, the same human dignity, and the same right to be an active part of public life.

1. Education as emancipation, not as a formality.
We must build personalized support programs in primary and 9-year schools, with tutors, mentors and direct social assistance for families who keep children out of school for economic reasons.
In every municipality where there are Roma or Egyptian communities, there should be quotas for assistant teachers from the community itself and the involvement of parents in school councils.

2. Employment through real vocational training and not through fake courses.
Training programs should be linked to specific sectors that require labor and be accompanied by subsidies for employers who hire members of these communities. A National Agency for the Employment of Egyptian and Roma Communities should be established, so that they are not lost in the endless lines of employment offices.

3. Housing as a right and not as a political bargain.
The majority of Roma and Egyptians live in inadequate conditions, without contracts, without legal right of residence. A special law is needed for the legalization and urbanization of the areas where these communities live, not to isolate them, but to include them. Municipal budgets should have a dedicated line for this issue and be managed with transparency and real representation of the community.

4. Health and social assistance, not as a charity but as a right.
A special structure is needed within every health center and every economic-social center in the municipality, which deals exclusively with the Roma and Egyptian communities, with intermediaries from the community itself. Guaranteed access to preventive services, support for mothers and children, assistance with documentation and health insurance.

5. Political and civic empowerment.
We must stop speaking on their behalf, and give them real spaces for political, civic and social representation. The creation of a National Council of Roma and Egyptian Communities with monitoring, advisory and decision-making powers in public policies is a necessity.

We cannot build a European Albania by leaving a part of Albanians outside its doors.
We cannot talk about development and dignity if we accept that thousands of people in this country are treated as invisible.

For this, we need to build a new vision of inclusion, one that does not see aid as the end, but as the beginning of independence.
A vision that does not only deal with projects and funds, but with the roots of social injustice, with the discriminatory mentality, with the structures of inequality that have kept them in this state for decades.

In the end, what the Rama government has failed to do is not simply implement projects, it is the lack of a real political will to treat the Roma and Egyptian communities as inseparable parts of the Albanian national body.
It has not failed just for them.
It has failed for all of us, because it has allowed such a huge social wound to continue without conscience, without will and without hope.

Change begins with knowing the truth. Change begins when no child is born with the designation “outside the system.”
And the Albania of tomorrow begins when there are no more forgotten communities, but only free and equal citizens.