The mandate of the “Neo-Highlander” is the protest’s first political victory

The Socialists have tried not to turn Marjana Koçeku’s resignation as an MP for Shkodra into a debate.

Apart from a few spontaneous reactions calling on her to return the mandate to the Socialist Party, there has been no official position. Marjana seems to have expected more, especially from the party itself. Since that response has not come, she has started replying to everyone who writes about her.

Her social media posts show obvious linguistic progress: they are now closer to standard Albanian and less tied to the sub-dialect she tried to use when she was a Socialist MP. But she has also made political progress. She is now speaking about early elections and a possible run in Tirana.

That is the protest’s first political success.

So far, the protest has produced international headlines, though those owe more to the Trump family than to the protest itself. It has produced a beautiful evening protest in Tirana and an ugly night march through the city’s streets, though that part is less visible to the public.

But its only real political product so far is Marjana’s resignation.

It does not matter whether she was already unhappy with the Socialist Party, whether she had her own problems, or whether the protest simply caught her attention. She has made a political gesture triggered by the protest.

She is its first political trophy.

Berisha’s attempt to pull her into his own camp — asking her to bring 12 more colleagues with her and bring down Rama — shows how powerless the official opposition is against the government. Its hopes now rest on defections.

Berisha understands that Marjana is a political product of the protest. She is one of its trophies. And he wants to take that trophy from the protest and use it for his own battle.

The fact that the protest’s leaders or organisers — whoever they are, because no one still knows — have not called Marjana, and have not celebrated her as their first success, says a lot about their complexes. It also shows that they are unwilling to recognise even their own achievement.

Perhaps Marjana will not go to the square. Perhaps she does not need them to celebrate her. But the fact that more suspicion toward her comes from the boulevard than from Socialist headquarters says a lot about the non-political instincts of the protest’s leaders.

Or worse, it says something about the way the protest has been carved up by the political factions that have pushed their way inside it.

The protest matters only if it produces politics beyond the clans within it. And its first political product is the resignation of an MP from the governing majority.

That does not endanger the majority. The Socialists have a problem with those who move toward them, not with those who leave.

The protest needs to celebrate those who move toward it.

Originally published in Albanian as: Mandati i Neomalsores, është fitorja e parë politike e protestës