OP-ED

'Technical' Prime Ministers or Tactical Charlatans

'Technical' Prime Ministers or Tactical Charlatans

Alfred Lela

Some journalists, nudged by their editors or by the crude evidence that names generate clicks, will not hesitate to ask—as they did today at the opposition leader's press conference—for the name of a "technical prime minister." They are joined by a handful of opposition figures who, impatient and naïve in the way protagonism so often is, want to be part of events that have not yet been born.

In Berisha's response lies the narrative line the opposition must follow if it does not wish to serve Edi Rama. Because every pseudo-event, every hybrid piece of news layered on top of the hundred and one scandals already on the table and kept alive by the government's propaganda machine, serves one purpose only: to shrink the weight of real scandals and replace what is alarming with something ridiculous.

There is nothing new in the fact that whenever parliamentary elections approach, whenever it is time for a President, an Ombudsman, or any post that involves a hint of competition, the public's ears and the appetite of careerists rise above Mount Dajti and turn into antennas transmitting that old Albanian desire: to be seen, to exist, to be talked about.

But this does not serve the cause—or the objectives—of the opposition. Replacing the opposition's project for an interim government without Rama at its head, one that would allow a cooling-off period for the engine meticulously tuned to rig elections through theft, with a parade of names—serious men or charlatans, ambitious women or desperate public wives who do or do not want to become "technical prime ministers"—turns the opposition's odyssey toward free and fair elections into a governmental vaudeville where some are flattered and everyone is deceived.

What is not being asked for is a technical prime minister. What is not being asked for is a caretaker government to simply pass the time. What is not being asked for is a handshake agreement, after which those same hands are wrapped around the throat of elections. What is being asked for is a serious and genuine ceasefire—not between parties, not between the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party, not between Berisha and Rama—but between the idea of ​​a government emerging from free elections and a parapolitical group that behaves like a government but is, in essence, nothing more than a gang of gangsters.

Names are merely decoys, meant to confuse a disoriented public that forgets that names carry no more weight or meaning than those Edi Rama casually utters at his party congresses, while senior Socialist figures are seen bewildered, sweating, soaked—without even knowing why, how, or for what.

This technique must not be allowed to be used against the Democratic Party as well. The desires of certain opposition figures—nostalgic for office and indulging not-so-youthful dreams of becoming prime ministers or directors—must not replace what is common and has only one name: the removal of a government that, through theft and corruption, has betrayed Albanians without distinction of political belief, religion, or region, and has emasculated the country.

The idea of ​​a technical government is not a resting stop to catch one's breath, but a transit station where the journey does not stop, but continues—toward sending Edi Rama into political retirement, or an asylum, and toward restoring in Albania the sacred institution of free elections.

Where people choose freely, without fear, and are not torn apart like fighting dogs.

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