The year when Rama asked for 'the steering wheel all to himself', and the time when he erased the chassis number

Alfred Lela

In the 2017 elections, Edi Rama demanded the steering wheel of government for himself and himself alone. Four years earlier, he had exhausted himself trying to build a broad coalition, even begging Ilir Meta to join—against whom he had deployed strength and fire on January 21, 2011, and even the “scum” that a left-leaning analyst had urged him to bring in. Long story short: Rama summoned, kept, and added more “scum,” but with the phrase “the steering wheel for myself,” he meant a style of governance that would become ever more apolitical, increasingly atypical.

The ends—or beginnings—of years are traditionally moments for balance sheets, and one can draw such a balance for Edi Rama as well. Quantity matters little here, even though balance sheets are by definition numerical rankings; what matters is quality.

If one operates with numbers, it can be said that Edi Rama has lost most—if not the core—of the team with which he came to power in 2013. Despite this, his insistence remains purely numerical, expressed in the madness of declaring that it does not concern him who goes to prison, because the Socialists are “800,000 strong.”

He dismisses the tally of arrests and investigations of ministers, MPs, and his closest collaborators, because he believes that in Albania—and therefore in government—only he matters. Yet he falls into a paradox by insisting that only he matters and only he makes the choices, while refusing to bear the costs of the same choices. He charges ahead at the helm of a caravan that is thinning and shrinking, not because of opponents, but because of vice and greed.

Rama’s expression, “let the dogs bark, the caravan moves on,” can no longer be used. The number of dogs is growing, but the caravan is shrinking. We are almost at the breaking point, where, at the head of the caravan, he may remain alone, holding the steering wheel of twelve years, with little to show for it except a government that has collapsed. But what has collapsed for Edi Rama is not merely his government in numerical terms; what has collapsed is political meaning itself—the reason elections are contested, won, and coalitions or governments are built in a democracy.

The will of the sovereign, expressed in 83 parliamentary mandates, with which he tried to console himself in his year-end message, is an illusion. In a real democracy, the will of the sovereign is transferred to MPs, who form a government, which then operates according to a set of predetermined standards—some written, some unwritten.

The Rama government has long ceased to function as such, which makes the fairy tale of the 83 mandates granted by the sovereign nothing more than a fireside fable told before a surreal year-end hearth.

Two deputy prime ministers, several key ministers—including an interior minister—the mayor of the metropolitan capital, several MPs, and a number of his closest collaborators, formal and informal, make Rama the most failed prime minister of the Albanian state since 1912. He may hold on to power even after losing its meaning, and the very fact that he does so proves that this government does not stem from the sovereignty of the vote, but precisely from its absence.

Put in mechanical terms, Edi Rama’s VIN has been erased. He may still have the steering wheel he took in 2013, but he no longer has a vehicle identifiable as “the government of the Socialist Party.” The pact forged in Shkodër in 2013—with Meta’s Socialists and Europe's—for a left-wing “people’s government,” he quickly turned into an oath to an “alliance of scum.”

Throughout this period, under that license plate, he has gained much financially, consolidated himself numerically, but lost far more of everything else. What Sali Berisha in 2017 paraphrased as a “narco-state” has now become the central theme and headline of many foreign media outlets, from southern Europe to North America.

Chances are, Rama will do what he does best: build patchwork, publicity-driven, meaningless governments, believing that by draining them of meaning he can continue to confuse the public and partners alike. A trap, no matter how elaborate, cannot function indefinitely. And Rama has reached that end. Which means that even a new, “spectacular” government can no longer hide either the head of the problem or the fact that the problem stinks—and that it is resolved from the head.

The government of the Socialist Party no longer has a chassis number. It is a car you can drive around the neighborhood, but one that cannot cross borders or pass customs. It can no longer be identified as a government, nor as one of the Socialist Party, nor even as Albania’s, but as a small sect clinging to power through apolitical means and methods. As such, every additional day in power is bad news for governance, for the Socialist Party, and above all for Albania.

To those who ask, “What is the alternative?”, the answer must be the same one history gives to all wreckers who care not for the country but for the threads that would be cut if Rama falls: the alternative always emerges through an honest electoral process—without interference, without force, and without 'scum'.