Ambassador Gonzato has been appointed Berisha’s enemy of convenience

In 1995, Sali Berisha was at war with much of the media, including the Albanian section of the BBC. He had declared most of its journalists enemies — some as collaborators of the communist secret police, others as collaborators of the Socialists.

At the time, a well-known figure from the communist era, someone who had perhaps once imagined himself as a possible successor to Ramiz Alia, was close to Berisha, who was then president. He promised Berisha he would give an interview to the BBC and “destroy” those supposed secret-police collaborators and new communists.

Berisha warned us that the interview would be devastating, the kind of thing that would shake the world.

It turned out to be stale, empty and dull. There was no news in it at all.

“He didn’t say anything,” my colleague Ylli Rakipi told Berisha. “You told us he would cause an earthquake.”

“Ylli, they cut the best parts,” Berisha replied. “We have to attack the BBC for censorship.”

“Why attack them?” Ylli said. “Let him give us the full interview. We’ll publish it ourselves, and then the BBC will be embarrassed by what it did.”

After that, the man disappeared and stopped answering the phone. He had simply lied to Berisha. He had used his closeness to him to get himself an interview with the BBC, while pretending that he was going there to make history.

Something similar has happened to Berisha recently with the European Union.

Some of his MPs have been keeping him hopeful, telling him they are doing important work in Brussels — especially through the so-called “German cell” in the Foreign Affairs Committee — to undermine Albania’s goal of closing EU negotiations. Former ministers and former associates of Edi Rama have also joined this half-imaginary, half-bureaucratic effort, “informing the press” every day that Brussels is supposedly moving against Albania.

The problem is that Berisha enjoyed this lie until the European Commission spoke publicly and officially. Then the gap became obvious: what Berisha and the public had been told was very different from what Brussels had actually said.

At that point, the people who had been encouraging Berisha with the idea that they would block Albania’s EU path needed a new enemy to explain their own failure. So they told him Ambassador Silvio Gonzato was to blame. According to them, Gonzato had spoken badly about Berisha — even more eagerly than he had spoken about Albania — and this, they said, was intolerable.

Perhaps Ambassador Gonzato did not say a word. Perhaps he knows nothing about the backstage games in Brussels that are being used to keep Berisha hopeful in Tirana. Perhaps he may have heard something. But one thing is certain: Gonzato has been the most pro-opposition EU ambassador Albania has had, and one of the most critical of the government.

Now he has become the victim of a lie Berisha wanted to believe: that Brussels would reject Albania, and that this would happen thanks to the tireless work of Berisha and his MPs against Albania’s EU membership.

But after the European Commission’s report, the truth was out in the open. Berisha needed someone to blame. So he chose the only real ally the opposition has in Brussels: Ambassador Gonzato. He even accused him of slandering him personally.

This is Berisha’s usual method. Whenever he has to explain a major failure, he personalizes it. He turns a political reality into a personal conspiracy involving one official.

When the United States declared him non grata, he blamed Yuri Kim and George Soros. When the United Kingdom sanctioned him, he blamed Lulzim Basha. When he fell from power in 1997, with support from the United States as well, he blamed Bill Clinton — even claiming it was because Clinton had refused to give him a military base he had asked for.

The pattern is always the same.

The only way Berisha can convince his followers that he is not at fault is by finding a personal enemy and reducing everything to a grudge.

Ambassador Gonzato has now fallen into that role. He has simply been appointed Berisha’s enemy of convenience.

The seriousness with which EU ambassadors in Albania have treated this attack is a waste of energy, because they misunderstand Berisha’s problem. They think he truly has something against Gonzato. He does not.

Berisha is angry because the EU is not doing what he wants against Albania. And because he cannot explain that failure to his Democrats, he needs a victim. This time, the victim is a diplomat who has actually been sympathetic to the opposition.

That is all there is to it.

Western diplomats in Albania should calm down. Ambassador Gonzato should, too. If you have a coffee with Berisha, he will probably tell you himself that he has nothing personal against you. He simply needs the story, so he can convince his own people that his enemies are the ones blocking him.

Originally published in Albanian as: Ambasadori Gonzato është caktuar “armik në dispozicion” të Berishës