The attempt to hide Berisha behind the protest

There is a hollow debate taking place over the violence at the boulevard protests, and over the organisers’ refusal to admit that it was planned. The reason is simple: everyone is trying to pretend that Sali Berisha has not already taken control of the protests. They want to explain the violence away as a police provocation.

Berisha himself says the same thing, although the satisfied look on his face almost gives him away as he denies it.

Take Saturday’s protest. From the start, there were about 10 to 15 young men with masks over their faces — the kind of people who arrive prepared for confrontation. Some of them were later identified breaking the doors of Police Station No. 3, claiming they wanted to “get the boys out of the cells”.

So those who insist they were provoked by the police, and only turned violent at the end of the protest, should answer a simple question: did the police also buy them the masks?

The same applies to the coffin. They bought a coffin and brought it to the protest. Does anyone know how difficult it is to buy a coffin? You have to go to a funeral company, give the name of a dead person, collect it, transport it to the boulevard, and then choose people to carry it on their shoulders.

That is not spontaneity. It is staging. It is a premeditated political symbol.

I am not saying it was necessarily wrong. Nor am I saying it was a crime. But it was prepared in advance. And if the protest organisers pretend they had nothing to do with it, then either no one in the square listens to them anymore, or they are being dishonest.

The excuse is thin.

These are protesters who came not only prepared for violence, but also far more politically committed to bringing down the government than almost anyone else in the square. They are part of the Democratic Party’s hardline street base. They have nothing to do with the people paid to speak from the stage, who call for peace while circulating public target lists against anyone they dislike or decide to attack.

In that sense, those using violence are more honest than those who call for peace while encouraging campaigns of abuse against journalists, artists and public figures.

At least the violent protesters are directing their anger at the government and the state. The stage speakers who draw up public hit lists are driven by something smaller: petty jealousy, personal failure and resentment towards people they cannot match. They are nothing like the young men who come to protests ready to fight.

Second, the myth that the square is being filled by the diaspora is false.

On the days of so-called national protests, the crowd grows several times larger. But no more than a few hundred people come from the diaspora. It is not as if convoys of cars full of protesters are entering Albania on those days.

What fills the square is the expectation of violence. The idea that “the boys from London” will arrive and something will happen. But the people who actually turn out are Berisha’s Democratic Party supporters, who have been waiting for exactly that kind of day.

Networks around Albin Kurti, along with mosque-linked groups from North Macedonia, bring far more people to the square than the diaspora does. But beyond a forceful march, they do little more than make their political alignment obvious through their chants and rhetoric.

So that square, too, was filled by the Democratic Party. The organisers simply do not want to admit it. Instead, they pretend the diaspora arrived and multiplied the turnout.

These are the Democratic Party’s traditional protesters. Even those who do come from the diaspora are overwhelmingly Democratic Party supporters. There are just not many of them.

So the claim that the protest is being driven by the diaspora, or by other organised forces outside the Democratic Party, is hollow. The heart of the protest is the Democratic Party. Its strength is force.

The most ridiculous part of all this is the group of people who credit the protest’s survival and strength to those who are supposedly against both Berisha and Rama.

In reality, Berisha is what keeps this protest alive. And Berisha is also what keeps them alive as opposition figures, because they cannot reinvent themselves overnight as anti-Berisha voices.

They are paid by Berisha. They receive salaries from media owned by Berisha’s family. They are with Berisha, while pretending to distance themselves from him in order to create the illusion that a third political force exists in Albania.

It would be good news if such a force existed. But it does not exist yet. I will welcome it gladly when it appears on the boulevard. And the first sign that it is real will be this: it will not be praised by the people who are still with Berisha.

Originally published in Albanian as: Ata që duan të fshehin Berishën në protestë