That worrisome German flag

Alfred Lela

Three or four German flags at Sunday’s protest were treated as “foreign bodies” by a segment of the political commentariat — that old sludge tied to the government, as much by conviction as by interest.

The presence of the tricolour was a novelty, given that the preferred flags of opposition protesters have traditionally been the national one, the Democratic Party flag, the American flag, and the European one.

Replacing the American banner with the German one does not represent any shift in the opposition’s narrative, nor in the protesters’ alignment. The collective intuition of a mass like the opposition is sensitive, at times bordering on paranoia — and not without reason.

Democrats in particular have been tossed around, often carelessly and sometimes harshly, during these 13 years in opposition, to the point that they have frequently felt like strangers in their own country and within Albania’s political spectrum. Being blue was not in fashion. Being pink was.

They have faced bullying rhetoric — “you will eat grass” — and, above all, a double standard from foreign representatives in Albania or visitors from Western chancelleries.

History (or karma) has taken its revenge in cases such as Yuri Kim, Gabriel Escobar, Miroslav Lajčák, or Federica Mogherini. Each of them has, at times, scandalized Albania’s opposition with positions perceived as openly one-sided, becoming part of the very controversy they were meant to arbitrate.

But that is the past.

The present — particularly over the past year — has hinted at a return to normalcy for supporters of the Democratic Party and the broader opposition. It began with the new U.S. administration following Trump’s return, the role of Chris LaCivita as campaign strategist, and a noticeable recalibration in the public posture of the U.S. Embassy, moving away from its earlier habit of focusing criticism on the opposition while largely sparing the government.

Still, among Democrats, there remains a persistent misunderstanding in their relationship with the international community. They expect the historical sympathy they received in the period 1990–1992 to continue indefinitely, while in reality the times have changed. Today’s global political elites are less ideological and anti-communist, and more stabilocratic and transactional.

This misunderstanding makes them both sensitive and insecure at the same time, as they continue to see themselves as the party born on “the right side of history.” From that perspective, they also frame the Socialist Party — the successor to the Party of Labour — measuring it with the yardstick of the Cold War and the years following the fall of the Wall.

Such a lens also explains the “change of flags,” which is neither a shift nor a declaration. It is simply a historical reflex.

A reflex of those who still see America through the lens of James Baker’s grand rally in Skanderbeg Square in 1991, and Germany through the era when its ambassador was Werner Daum.

Daum passed away last year in Albania and requested to be buried here.

In a twist of history — and perhaps as confirmation of why former communists, repackaged as socialists, remain in conflict with “the last German” — none of the majority’s representatives agreed to be involved in organizing or honoring the burial of the former German ambassador, a friend of Albania, when asked to do so.

He deserved, at the very least, a dignified farewell for that final wish alone.

It seems the socialists have still not forgiven “the first German,” Werner Daum, for helping break the communist stranglehold that their predecessors had over the country by inviting Albanians into the German embassy in July 1990.

In the end, it remains a clash — almost archetypal — between “Ballists” and “Partisans” when it comes to the West.

Everything has changed. And at the same time, nothing has.