The myth of the Minotaur and Rama as a victim of his own labyrinth

Alfred Lela

Sali Berisha faced 37 decisions against him by the Constitutional Court during his 8 years as Prime Minister. Edi Rama, with just one half-decision last weekend, has put himself on a collision course with the highest court in the country, a body that has consistently sided with his policies, and consistently followed a double standard.

The Prime Minister's anger, however, says more about his own predicament than about the integrity of the constitutional judges. It proves that Edi Rama is completing all the stages that political literature describes when it talks about autocrats and autocracy.

A strong sign of this is his determination to inject changes into the Constitution, with the aim of protecting the government cabinet (read to yourself) from demarches by the Republic's prosecutors, in an attempt to investigate, prevent or punish corruption.

Note: a Prime Minister who operates unhindered in 98 percent of the territories of power in a parliamentary Republic, seeks to occupy even a minimalist 2 percent, and close every turret from which the prying periscope of any annexation of other powers, in this case the judiciary, can enter.

The argument that Rama is an autocratic leader who exceeds competencies and the separation of powers cannot be sufficient, because this would make us theoretical observers of hostage-taking.

Nor can it be enough to hope for third parties, Brussels or Washington, who will pull the carrot and start using the stick. If the Americans, for a year now, have built a rhetoric that profiles Rama and his government in Venezuelan terms, beyond that there is no news. If the Trump administration follows the President's transactional intuition, this would not do Albania any good, due to the fact that if Rama were asked for an agreement, any agreement, he would accept it as long as he retains power.

Unlike Maduro, who played the role of a Latin American macho, refusing a deal with the gringos, Rama is ready for any deal, as long as he is not affected. The fact that Albania remains in limbo is precisely because the Americans have neither the time nor the need for a deal with Rama. Albania is a NATO area, a candidate for the EU and, most importantly, with a population clearly pro-Euro-Atlantic.

How then does one get out of this labyrinth guarded by a Minotaur? Which is Ariana's thread, and which is Theseus'? As in the myth of the Minotaur, Rama is becoming a curse for the country, first of all because the Prime Minister has stripped politics and social bodies of rationality and of society's need and strength for change.

Social apathy, the trampling of institutions, the desecration of moral authorities (the cauldron, the owl, the fools, etc.), the creation of conditions for mass exodus, the relativization of values, are all brands reinforced by Rama. By losing the meaning of the state, he has turned it into a labyrinth where points of reference are missing, where arbitrators are avoided and where shared values ​​and codes, written or not, are ignored.

In this sense, Rama is both the Minotaur and the labyrinth, in one. What makes him tragic, both his fate and that of society, is that Rama himself is a victim of the labyrinth he created. The last week's outbursts and the rants to interfere with the Constitution, with the aim of repelling any institutional body that questions him, or threatens the labyrinth, speak of this double stratification, of the monster who is also the victim.

Edi Rama, having built the 'alliance of the stinkers', has now understood that the system needs the stinkers, not only to keep it afloat, not only through presence, but also through sacrifice.

Sacrifice, as many myths of antiquity prove, has a second edge: no matter how late, the sacrificers themselves become the sacrificed. This is what Rama is trying to avoid.

No matter how strong it may seem, history, mythology, psychology, all the sciences and crafts of society tell us that the perpetrators of sacrilege will one day go to the edge of sacrifice.

When there is no one left to sacrifice, Rama feels the blade approaching and therefore seeks to escape the labyrinth.