The West’s doubts about Albania, and Berisha’s doubts about the West

I do not know why Sali Berisha has decided to police Albania’s EU negotiation process and turn it into a political battle. Listening to him, one might think he has finally lost hope that the United States and Britain will lift their sanctions against him, and is now trying to reinvent himself as a Europeanist — a victim, not of Washington and London, but of the wider Anglo-Saxon world.

But then you hear the way he speaks about the EU ambassador in Tirana, and you see the reaction of all EU ambassadors in Albania, and it almost sounds as if he is under harsher sanctions from Brussels than from the United States or Britain, which have actually sanctioned him.

So every attempt he makes to police the government’s EU integration process is wasted the moment he opens his mouth.

It would be far easier for him to contribute as a genuinely pro-European leader inside the Democratic Party. It would cost him nothing.

He could start by reforming the party. He could open it up and set clear rules. He could then respect the party statute he wrote himself, especially the article that says the party leader must resign after a heavy defeat.

He could open a real leadership race instead of excluding every serious challenger so he can run alone.

There are many other things he could do if he wanted to look like a leader with European instincts.

He has no control over the negotiation chapters. He has no control over how efficiently the government aligns laws with the EU. He has no control over public procurement, or over whether European companies are allowed to compete fairly in tenders in Tirana.

In other words, he controls none of the things Brussels asks of the government.

What he does control are the things expected of any Albanian politician who claims to be pro-European.

And on that front, he has nothing Western about him. Not even a strand of hair. Even his grey hair brings to mind Karadžić and Stalin more than any European statesman.

Everything he does as a politician is anti-European, anti-Western, and against every standard expected of a political party that wants to operate in a future EU member state.

I do not know why he has chosen to act both as a pro-European opposition leader and as an enemy of Europe at every important moment of his political life.

If he had a little courage, he would turn the Democratic Party openly into an anti-European party, just as he turned it for four years into an anti-American party. That would probably inspire more people than the shrinking crowd he has been left with today.

At least Albania would then have one honest party: a party for those who do not want the West, and who may have more reasons in their own lives to oppose it than to support it.

That way, Berisha could at least enter history as an honest leader at the end of his political life. He would not need to stage “Europeanist” battles from SHQUP, a building whose own history is hardly European.

As things stand, Berisha has more doubts about the West than the West has about Albania.

The West simply needs time and evidence before making Albania part of it. Berisha has already exhausted both the time and the evidence needed to convince the West that he has no place in it.

Originally published in Albanian as: Dilemat e Perëndimit për Shqipërinë dhe dilemat e Berishës për Perëndimin