The three types of protest in today's march on Tirana

Alfred Lela

Today, at 6:00 p.m., the Democratic Party and its opposition allies will gather in what they have called a "march towards Tirana" to react to the country's political, economic, and social situation. This time, there will be no speeches, calls, or even scenography, but this is not new.

The protest, intended as a march, aims to include everyone who disagrees with this government. So it is meant to be horizontal, not vertical; not with Berisha and other exponents of PD and the opposition who make calls or present the theses of the revolt, but with people who march alongside each other, regardless of whether they are left or right, nationalist or cosmopolitan, conservative or progressive.

Therefore, today's opposition protest is urbi et orbi, for the world and the city, addressed to everyone and no one in particular.

The idea here is that a bad government does not distinguish between itself and its opponents; a bad government, when it mismanages or corrupts public funds, affects not only the taxes of Democrats but also of Socialists, not only destroys today's finances but interferes with the chances of the future.

This awareness should unify those who have been protesting against Edi Rama and his government for years with those who are dissatisfied, angered, and disagree with how things are going in Albania.

Any temptation to see the protest as a plight of the political opposition is the old attempt to build dividing blocks of 'us' and 'them', 'good' and 'bad', 'left' and 'right'. In an Albania that works, everyone is 'good'; the opposite, in an Albania that works only for a minority, everyone is 'bad'. This is because, all together, they lose what is the essence of a democratic system: equal chances in the game, and only capacities make the difference. When this equation is undone, we have the law that erases any excess of one over the other.

Albania today is the excess of a small group over the majority. Nothing explains this more simply and clearly than Albania shrinking and the diaspora swelling. This exodic flight is not a psychedelic whim but a migration for a 'change of environment'; those who flee are not artists who move in search of inspiration but Albanians who want to place themselves in front of equal opportunities and equality before the law.

The rejecters of today's protest are, therefore, of two types. Those who are gone and have no way to be, and those who remain have no way to come. This second group includes the captured army of the administration and their families who, willingly or unwillingly, form the army of patron Nazis, which today will be under total surveillance of the opposition march in Tirana.

We should not hide behind our fingers. Yes, there is a decline in protests and participation—for the reasons mentioned above—but the misunderstanding here is that of those who complain about the 'powerlessness of the opposition.' Those who contributed to the shrink discuss it as someone else's fault. The depth of the problem tightens society and speaks of its powerlessness to keep alive the mechanisms of disobedience, renewal, dissent, rotation, etc.

Those who fled protested on foot, and some of those who remained were constantly on foot. Others refuse to recognize the reasons for those who flee and those who stand.

These are the people who are sitting on their ass.