The final stage of any regime: the ridiculous

Alfred Lela

In the novels of Latin American authors, abusive caudillos, at the end of their age and career, turn into impotent bedwetters. At the end of the Cold War, the Romanian dictator Ceausescu, who ruled with an iron hand for several decades, had a funny death. Manuel Noriega also met a tragicomic end. In the context that this Op-Ed wants to illustrate, by ridiculous, we will understand the condition or the end of people and political regimes that have claimed one thing for a long time and ended up with the complete opposite. Their decline concerning their power and claims is seen as ridiculous.

In this respect, even Edi Rama's regime is becoming ridiculous, which means it is nearing the end. Rama started as prime minister, demolishing some buildings and publishing photos of the mess found in the basement of the government headquarters. It was his way of saying that, with the Renaissance at the helm of affairs, the chaos of the previous democrat government would end, law and order would prevail, and aesthetics would be the face of things.

Thus, he invented the Urban Renaissance, removed the fence in front of his office, and planted installations in its garden to show openness and orientation toward beauty. On the sides of the Tirana-Durrës highway, he planted palm trees and some strange concrete mini-domes.

People thus experienced what can be called a phase of shock, which came both from Rama's methodology and the language chosen to convey it. This mixture of Jacobinism and Sanguinism overcame the initial surprise, and with time passing, the public became indifferent. After passing the stage of wanting to shock, Rama entered the second stage, which can be called reformism. The most significant claims are related to the Justice Reform, an annex thereof, vetting in the police force, and the deflation of the big belly of the policemen. Without forgetting a leitmotif, which he had carried over from the electoral campaign, with the illumination of a cliché that, like all clichés, is both banal and popular: "the fault is not with the individual, but with the system".

Eleven years later, it can be said, now with certainty, that Rama's regime is in its last, concluding phase. Three illustrative examples from the previous week prove that the Renaissance has passed from the shock stage to the reformer stage and is now prone to the ridiculous.

The first case is related to the arrest by SPAK of a senior director under the Ministry headed by Rama's deputy, B. Balluku. After a search of the apartment, several works of art were found at the director's house, which were reported as expensive (this is a well-known method of the criminal world to hide illegal assets or launder dirty money: buying expensive paintings from famous authors). The claim of the government's director was fantastic: I made the paintings myself. Of course, it is a claim from desperation because if the controlling policemen do not know about art, SPAK, even though there may not be people so elevated in the workings of culture, it's their job to hire art experts to assess such work.

The second case is even more delightful. The police announced that they had deported a wanted person from Dubai; they also showed the footage when he got off the plane in handcuffs. The next day, the 'extradited' said the exact opposite. He had returned from Dubai voluntarily and handed himself over to the police when he landed in Rinas. The police handcuffed him and put him on the stairs of the plane from where they had asked him to get off so that they could photograph him and share this 'success' with the media.

The third case belongs to a janitor who made a living by cleaning the houses of those with better financial opportunities (read: people from Rama's administration). One of them was Ada Klosi, a former high official, in whose apartment the janitor and her son stole 500,000 euros. At the end of the investigation, the Prosecutor's Office demanded that the thief of taxpayers' money be punished with 1.5 years in prison, while the janitor who stole the stolen money would be sentenced to 4.8 years. With simple logic, the amount stolen was the same for the former official and the janitor, i.e., 500,000 euros. The only difference is that one was involved in abuse of power and public office. A. Klosi abused her duty as a public official, while Dobi abused her 'duty' as a janitor. In any case, the burden of responsibility and guilt should have been heavier for the former official.  

These are just three episodes that have surfaced and illustrate the banality of evil, i.e., acclimatization by the government and administration to theft, corruption, and distortion of the truth through propaganda at any price.

From the phase of shock to reformism, Rama's regime has become ridiculous. Of course, this is no laughing matter because the public bears the burden.