The protest’s political and pathetic demands

When the December Movement began in 1990, after the clashes of the first night, the students drafted their first demands on December 9. They began with living conditions: heating, blankets and, if I remember correctly, political pluralism came seventh.

That was as far as we had got.

The political figures who approached the protest and eventually took control of it advised the students that, when they met Ramiz Alia, they should set the other demands aside and focus on pluralism. The rest, they said, could be fixed later.

I remembered that episode yesterday when I saw what should have been good news: the current protest has finally produced political demands.

The bad news is that the demands look political, but they are weak.

The main demand is the resignation of the government. The other five call for the repeal of government laws that encourage tourism investment in fields, mountains, seas and hills.

I am not sure how far those demands represent all the groups inside the protest, but let us take them as they are.

The main demand is the resignation of the government. So the protesters have to choose. Either they demand the government’s resignation and pursue the other five demands with a new government, or they ask this government to meet the five demands and drop the demand for resignation.

As things stand, the list feels more like a way to make noise than a serious political platform.

Political demands require political representation. They also require clarity.

If the goal is the resignation of the government, then the demand should be just that: the resignation of the government. That is a political battle. It is not easily won, but it is a serious one. It could give the country a new opposition, built around new rules, and change the course of Albanian politics.

Now that Zvërnec has moved out of the centre of the protest, remaining mostly in the international media because of the Trump family, the organisers need to sit down and prove they can represent the protest politically.

I know that is difficult. There are several groups involved and a lot of mistrust between them. But the idea of changing the government could unite them. In the end, the real test of this protest is whether it can produce new leadership.

Everything else is noise.

If the protest can produce leaders who are able to bring together its different groups around a clear political purpose, then those leaders deserve to inherit its political capital and face the government as a new opposition.

If they cannot, they will simply have wasted the chance and the energy of several thousand young Albanians who clearly want political representation.

Most of the young people I have seen on social media say they are protesting because of their own problems. They are right to say so. This is a rare chance to create a new political generation — one that forms itself, instead of being inserted into politics by Berisha or Rama.

But to form itself, it must prove that it can produce its own leaders.

Do not fall into the trap of delusional bloggers who say: “We do not want leaders,” “We do not want a steering group,” “This is the people’s protest,” and so on. Those are exactly the lines Edi Rama and Berisha’s official opposition would like to hear.

Nor should anyone indulge the fantasy that “Rama is terrified,” “Berisha is finished,” “Qorri is Soros,” “Shehaj is a racketeer,” “Lapaj is a clown,” and so on. Each of them has the following they deserves. None of them will disappear in a day because 3,000 people have turned up in the square holding memes.

A protest cannot be “no name, no face, no number.”

It needs a name, numbers and a face.

Otherwise, it cannot achieve anything political.

I understand the disappointment with the political leaders of the transition. But every movement that has changed Albania has had ideas and leaders.

The December Movement created the first circle of political leadership after communism. The events of 1997 created another. The events of 2002 to 2005 produced a new movement, and so on.

Serbia had a similar movement a year ago, dozens of times larger than this one. It failed because the groups involved could not produce a leader. Today, it has ended up in the hands of Serbian nationalists whose main cause is no longer the reason the protest began, but returning Kosovo to Serbia.

This protest risks the same fate if it does not produce its own leaders, united around a clear programme.

It could move from the curly pelican to the National Front slogan “Albania for Albanians, death to traitors,” then to the Autochthonous flag, and finally to Albania’s isolation and agrarian reform, because some former owners have recovered too much land.

At that point, everyone will realise they wasted a chance to change history and create a new opposition.

They will simply have reshuffled the government.

Originally published in Albanian as: Rreth kërkesave politike dhe patetike të protestës