They could at least be the lesser evil

The Democratic Party held its “election” for party leader today. But because the sitting leader was effectively running against himself, the party had to rebrand the vote at the last minute as a referendum.

The new label did not have enough time to stick. If anything, it made the confusion clearer. The DP now looks like a child caught in a lie, forced to invent a new one every few minutes to cover the first. The problem with that strategy is that it requires memory and imagination — two qualities usually found in fresher minds, and both visibly absent in the party today.

Of course, there is nothing automatically scandalous about a party having only one candidate for leader at a given moment. It happens even in democratic parties. Up to that point, Berisha is not entirely wrong.

Usually, candidates must meet a formal threshold to qualify for a leadership race. Sometimes only one person meets that threshold. In such cases, logic says that person should simply be declared elected, and the unnecessary contest should end there.

That is exactly what makes this so-called “race” ridiculous — a process the DP has tried to rename every few days. What is the point of asking people to vote, even in a referendum, when the ballot offers only one choice?

That is one category.

But there is another: parties built around a single dominant figure, where the whole process serves less to reconfirm the leader than to test loyalty to him. These are parties like Erdogan’s AKP, or, until recently, Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary, where the result is known before the process even begins.

The irony is that the DP has spent years trying to associate the Socialists with exactly these kinds of parties and leaders, especially with Erdogan’s authoritarian model. Yet it now follows the very political model it has used to attack its opponent. How credible can that be?

The problem is not simply that Berisha will be re-elected, reconfirmed, or whatever the party chooses to call the process. No one ever doubted that.

The problem is the political imagination being offered to Albanian citizens. The only formal alternative to a government accused of authoritarianism appears to have adopted the same logic of uncontested authority.

Some of the DP’s accusations against the government may be right. But the solution it offers is impossible. It is like trying to cure a disease by injecting the body with an older, more severe version of the same illness.

If a party treats internal competition as a threat to its own existence, it is admitting that its institutions are far smaller than its leader. And if that is true, why should citizens believe that, under that party’s rule, state institutions would be stronger than the leader?

Albania does not lack leaders who demand trust. It has too many of them.

What it lacks are political structures that deserve citizens’ trust even when leaders change.

The Democratic Party may call this process a referendum. In the narrowest sense, perhaps it is. But a referendum on what, exactly?

On Berisha’s authority? Who has ever questioned that inside this party?

On the party’s obedience to him? That is already known too.

Albanians have long been forced to choose between two evils. The DP could at least have tried to be the lesser one.

It seems to have failed even at that.