These protests produce politics, not political parties

The constant demand that the protest should produce its own political representation makes little sense.

Protests rarely create political parties. That usually happens only when history itself changes: when communism falls and parties are suddenly allowed, or when ideological movements lead revolutions and later turn into parties.

Albania is not in that moment.

It already has traditional parties. It has a government shaped by the rules of the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union, NATO and other international institutions. In that setting, the only real space for new parties is outside the current system: either ultra-left ideological parties, or parties inspired by religion, with political Islam already visible on the horizon.

Everyone else — whether they speak for the protest or simply enjoy it — is part of the existing political system.

Politically, the only party with a left-wing ideological identity, one that imitates revolutionaries but ultimately becomes a party of the system, is Arlind Qorri’s United Movement. Its rhetoric is anti-system, much like Syriza in Greece or similar movements in Spain. But in the end, such movements usually moderate and become part of the same system.

They are also at the heart of this protest’s organisation, especially the street marches that follow the evening performance on the boulevard.

Then there are the parties of Agron Shehaj and Adriatik Lapaj. They like protests and try to attach themselves to them. They are not anti-system. They are not ideological. They are power dreamers who see politics as a promising business.

That is why the idea of forming a new party out of the protest is avoided and ignored, usually in the name of preventing division.

The rest of the protest is made up of marginalised or radical groups: people close to political Islam, people who speak openly on Iran’s behalf, admirers of conspiracy theories and anti-Soros activists. Do not expect them to form a party. And even if they did, they could not represent the protest. They are people who need prophets, not party structures.

The Soros NGOs, which carry much of the organisational and financial weight of the protest, do not aim to create political parties. Their aim is to influence the parties that already exist.

So do not expect a new political party to come out of this protest.

Those who control the protest already have their party. The others are using it for marketing, and as a chance to appear on television every night.

The other themes — social anger, corruption, exclusion — belong to the system, not to anti-system politics.

Take corruption. Europe has entrusted the fight against corruption in Albania to the justice system and to SPAK. Fighting corruption is no longer an electoral platform in Albania. It is an institutional battle carried out through the new justice system.

With all its flaws, excesses, repression or determination — with all its good and bad sides — that battle has no longer been left to politics. It belongs to SPAK and the courts.

That issue is closed. Albania does not need a SPAK party or an anti-SPAK party. Neither would harm SPAK, and neither would fix it.

So those issuing “fatwas” against corruption in the square, in the name of the protest, would do well to check their own papers. Trouble may find them too.

The protests in Albania are a mixture of “patriotic”, nationalist, Islamist and protectionist positions, at times openly hostile to foreign investment. At the same time, they are also a display of freedom, shared frustration and civic energy.

Their only common value is that they are a democratic exercise.

And that is good for society.

That is why these protests can produce politics, but not a political party.

They will have political effects. They may damage the governing majority. They may damage the Democratic Party. They may strengthen small parties or increase abstention. But there cannot be one political party that represents the protest.

And certainly not one leader.

Leaders emerge. You cannot produce them on demand.

So stop exhausting yourselves by asking protesters to form a party or find a leader. They already have their leaders every night at the protest, and those leaders already have their followers.

Their distance from the Socialist Party and the Democratic Party does not come from civic purity. It comes from the political ambition of the small parties that have taken control of the protest.

That is why they look so civic in the afternoon, and so angry and ready to lynch at night, moving from party headquarters to party headquarters and cursing the militants of the big parties.

They are not trying to change the system.

They are trying to change the parties inside the system so they can take power from them.

The elections will show who really represents the protest.

For now, just look at who is angry with the two big parties.

Originally published in Albanian as: Këto protesta prodhojnë politikë, por jo parti politike