Why is only one party campaigning in Albania?

Alfred Lela

The electoral campaign in Albania is almost shapeless. Its physiognomy is lost in three battle trenches, where political wings are lining up to demand Albanians' attention, trust, confusion, or vote on May 11th.

In one trench, Edi Rama, alone, with 12 years behind him - and a passport that shows him off - is the great absentee of this campaign. When you look at his morning agenda, the numerous meetings stand out, and you think it is a campaign taken seriously. When he walks from one activity to another, you realize everyone is the same. It is Rama and the passport. What is missing is the confrontation with 12 years of governance, whether in retrospective or prospective form. Rama does not talk about what he has done in a decade, but about what he will do in the next.

Rama has cleared the field of his opponent. In the sense that he does not enter into a debate with his rival, does not allow ministers to go to the TV studio with his opponents, does not present a balanced view of governance, and does not balance this with the public or interest groups. He even calls the fact that there are MPs, ministers, and mayors arrested for corruption a success of his government.

Edi Rama has emptied politics and campaigning of meaning.

His campaign is atypical, conceived as a NETFLIX series, not a presentation of the program, and a confrontation with the record of 12 years of governance. It can be entertaining, but the citizenry begins when they understand that they must separate the fun from management, governance, and politics.

In a second block are listed the mini-parties, or small parties, that call themselves 'new', but demonstrate old typologies. They, too, are without a campaign. First, because they do not have the muscles to cope with major national campaigns. Second, because even though they legitimize themselves as formations that were set up to overthrow the cult of the leader, they reshape and re-present precisely this cult. Who knows anyone else in Agron Shehaj's Mundësia or Arlind Qori's Lëvizja Bashkë. In addition, stuck in the trap of self-definition as 'different from the old ones', these mini-parties make the big mistake of packaging the two big parties into a single opponent. This amnesties the 12-year-old government and erodes the opposition of the barricades, the one that - for better or worse - has made the resistance to this government the longest, most costly, and most productive. If politically it is myopic, intellectually it is dishonest. Instead of investing heavily in a majority, even a fragile one, for Berisha, where they would be part as a condition, they contribute to maintaining an unknown majority what form it will take, about them or to society. It is known: like the scientist's Frankenstein, like any monster, it will grow and will first strike those who helped in its production, including the leaders of the mini-parties.

In a political theater with a strong majority, mini-parties are minimized even more, to the point of losing meaning. The big leaders of small parties should look to authoritarian countries, or the hybrid democracies in the east of our continent, for this.

There is no talk of their program, or rather, not even the mini-parties talk about it, because presenting a program identifies them as a governing force. Since they lack muscle and support, the only form that would make them a governing party is an alliance with one of the two major parties.

Coming to Sali Berisha's Democratic Party, which seems strange because it is the only one that operates as a classic political campaign party. With a clear program, with tireless elaboration, with direct meetings with citizens, in open public places, Sali Berisha has returned as a serious politician with the idea of ​​the state and statism and the seriousness enough to make it a reality.

He is open to debate, takes questions from journalists several times a week at headquarters or after various activities in Tirana and the districts, and other party associates request debate with SP rivals.

The opponent is missing.

In this sense, the Democratic Party is the only one that campaigns and is campaigning. The other two blocs are not interested in campaigning. The PS because it has nothing to show for the past, and the mini-parties because they have nothing to offer for the future.