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OP-ED

Basha is also against Zelenskiy's shirt

Politiko 2023-07-31 19:25:24
Basha is also against Zelenskiy's shirt

Alfred Lela

Lulzim Basha's alla Zelensky T-shirt, a 'trend' of his in visual communication during the last months, constitutes a parody. This is not an attempt to criticize Basha or his staff but to mark a political leader's visual or verbal communication symbols and what they say about him. In this case, the irony of the circumstances comes to the fore, accompanied by a naivety based on the wrong starting point that political communication has innovation in its essence. It should focus on his/her political character and nature, and everything depends on his/her personal and public character. Not the opposite, that is, the character does not get used to findings or innovations.

The t-shirt in military green that Mr. Basha has favored in several recent outings has three goals. First, make the returning leader look young (or younger than others). Second, show him in battle (or war), so to speak. Thirdly, an even more central subtext, Basha wants to imagine himself and be imagined by others as the young against the old, the new against the traditional. So, a Zelensky to a Putin. In our case Basha vs. Berisha, Rama, and Meta.

Intuitively, the political figure benefits symbolically from a brand that already exists and can use it, as is the case with Vladimir Zelensky, the new leader at war, the head of a small or medium-sized state, against a superpower like Putin's Russia. But the symbolism begins to weaken and even become ridiculous when the facts are superimposed and weigh heavily on intended metaphors.

Because, in the Zelensky-Putin report, Basha does not resemble the Ukrainian leader in any case. If a figure that Basha illustrates must be inserted in this report, it is that of Dimitri Medvedev, a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Such is Basha's relationship, at least publicly obtained, with Sali Berisha, for example—a dependency report. The Ukrainian leader, whom Basha likes to follow with a military shirt or a mise-en-scène of war, does not have this spider nest in the corner of the edifice of his public persona.

What "kills" Basha more than this is an already old stratification, almost turned into folklore, of his "fruitless" and losing battles and their ridicule by the mainstream or social media. "The battle has just begun" circulates as one of the most descriptive jokes of Basha as a politician.

To take a politician who wants to reinvent himself and insert him right into the heart of this harmful folklore is extreme naivety in political communication. Quite the opposite should have been the path taken. A political figure from the old quarters of politics, where he has served longer than he has led, should not pursue a message attuned to the new/provocative. A politician not known for winning battles must not color the public profile with military highlights nor verbalize in terms of war. A chairman who has usurped one of the two old parties of the spectrum (which also aims to be right-wing) does not go to lecture as a warrior of morality and the new.

He has the freedom to do all this, but he also needs the patience not to be taken seriously.

And this should be at the heart of Basha's public communication effort: how to build a leader that people take seriously.

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