New Albania, old habits?

As the protest approaches its first month, with people marching every evening through the streets of Tirana, it increasingly looks as if its organisers are trying to solve problems they created themselves.

Worse, every time they try to solve one problem, they create another.

This was visible from the start.

One of the protest’s first weaknesses was how quickly it became defensive after government attacks, and how often it tried to justify itself the next day.

Whenever the prime minister or government voices described the protest as manipulated by neighbouring countries, parts of the protest rushed out the next day with slogans against Fredi Beleri or Serbia.

When the government called the protest Marxist, the next day brought chants of “Down with communism!”

The same thing happened when the majority described the protest as a movement influenced by Iran’s ayatollah regime.

In trying to defend themselves, the protest organisers accepted the government’s frame.

They allowed themselves to dance inside the frame set by the prime minister.

A serious protest cannot allow its slogans to be written, even indirectly, by the person it has declared its main enemy.

By now, the protest should be showing clearly what it is.

At its strongest moment, it did seem clear: this was a protest against the capture of public wealth by private interests.

That was the moment that gave many of us, for once, a reason to feel proud to be Albanian for the right reasons — not because of the usual nationalist myths about blood, felt caps and flags.

For the first time in a long time, we saw that society was still capable of rising up for universal causes: environmental justice, democratic control over public goods, and opposition to deep economic inequality.

But the longer the protest goes on, the further it seems to move from the first foundation on which it was built.

The latest example is the letter sent by the protest’s coordinating group to ambassadors and heads of missions from Western countries.

Officially, the letter is simply a notice of the protesters’ demands to Western diplomats in Albania.

But it also reveals an old reflex of Albanian politics: whenever it lacks legitimacy at home, it looks for it from a higher authority, preferably outside the country.

The two mainstream parties have shown this reflex repeatedly whenever they have been in opposition.

Unable to build the legitimacy they need among citizens, they knock on embassy doors, hoping that outside attention will compensate for their weakness at home.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the protest organisers wanting to inform foreign ambassadors.

But it is a problem that the letter was addressed specifically to Western diplomats, while no similar formal step was taken toward the country’s own institutions.

The answer, of course, will be that they do not recognise those institutions because they are captured and unable to fix a problem they created themselves.

That is a fair argument.

But if captured institutions are rejected completely, another question follows: what does the protest recognise?

If the answer is the people — or citizens, for anyone who finds the word “people” too heavy — then the protest must show that through clearer political action.

It must show how decisions are made inside the movement.

It must show how the demands are drafted.

Who approves them?

And how can protesters themselves challenge those demands if they disagree with them?

The fact that the protest still dances inside the government’s frame raises doubts.

Either it lacks the organisational capacity to step outside that frame, or the organisers were frightened by the energy that first gathered around their call and do not know what to do with it.

Or, if we want to be a little more conspiratorial, those who pull the strings of the protest may not really be interested in the deep changes being demanded for a “new Albania”.

Perhaps that last suspicion is unfair.

But in a society where the antennas of conspiracy are always raised, ambiguity invites conspiracy.

If we do not know who makes the decisions and who speaks on behalf of the square, the vacuum will naturally be filled with theories.

The only way to kill them is clarity.

Paradoxically, a movement that began against the sale of the country and against global oligarchy now risks repeating one of the oldest habits of Albanian politics: the belief that political demands become serious only when Western diplomats bless them.

It brings to mind the old story of the mice who decided that their problem with the cat could be solved by hanging a bell around its neck.

Everyone agreed.

But no one could answer the real question: who would put the bell on the cat?

The protest has announced big demands.

Now it must answer the same question for the public.

Who puts the bell on the cat?

In plain terms: who sets the movement’s strategy?

Who speaks on behalf of the square?

Who takes responsibility?

The country should not be for sale.

But political legitimacy cannot be sought from embassies either.

Especially not by a movement that says it is anti-system.