Three pointless debates about the protest

The first pointless debate about the protest is over numbers.

Numbers usually become an issue only when a gathering is too small to be taken seriously as a protest. That normally happens with party-organised rallies, which are often forced and serve mainly to show how much support a party still has.

This protest belongs to no one and to everyone. There are enough people for it to count as a protest. But the debate over numbers is pointless for another reason: the international attention around it has multiplied its size many times over.

Prime Minister Edi Rama mentioned this today during his exchange from a distance with Senator Bernie Sanders, the most famous figure of the global far left, criticising him, among other things, for inflating the number of protesters tenfold.

It is a useless debate.

Numbers matter when a protest needs to prove it is large. But this protest, thanks to Donald Trump and to Albania being turned into a stage for a global battle against him, no longer depends on numbers in the usual way. In Tirana, there may be between 3,000 and 10,000 people actively involved in the protest. In the international media, the same protest can become 100,000 people, or even one million.

So there is no point fighting over the numbers. The global media, which usually acts as the referee in such disputes, has already inflated them many times over. Arguing about them no longer makes much sense.

The second debate is over foreign interference in support of the protest.

These are two separate things. The protest itself is entirely Albanian. The international interference is also clear, but it is not driven by the interests of the protesters. It is driven by other actors’ problems with Albania and, in most cases, by their problems with Donald Trump.

Iran, for example, has been filling TikTok with AI-generated videos and amplified accounts since the first day of the protest. Political Islam has tried to present the project as the construction of a territory for Palestinians who would expel Jews from Gaza. Greeks are concerned that there are Greek property owners in Zvërnec and that Greece should also be consulted on the matter. The European Commission is worried that Albania may arrive at the EU’s door with a package of politically high-profile investors from the United States.

All of this is true. But none of it is directly connected to the protest. These actors are simply using it.

Everyone pursuing their own concern is within their rights. But the protest of Albanian citizens is, in reality, about the problems of Albanian citizens. The others are only piggybacking on it.

The third pointless debate is similar to the second. It is about who controls the protest from within and who is benefiting from it.

Everyone is trying to use it.

Every political party in Albania is trying to benefit from the protest. So is every party leader without an electorate, and so is the Democratic Party, whose electorate has largely deserted it.

As is clear, United Movement is at the centre of the organisational structures, and its ability to penetrate a civic protest is almost enviable. Agron Shehaj is using it to make videos, hoping that one day the likes will turn into votes. Berisha’s Democratic Party is trying to steer it into a movement against Rama, because it feels threatened by the fact that the protest has replaced it as the opposition.

But Edi Rama is also using the protest in his own way. Thanks to the protest, and to his determination to defend the project, he is using it to re-energise his party politically and shake up its structures ahead of a political confrontation.

With Berisha’s opposition dead and corrupt, and with SPAK aggressive toward it, Edi Rama and the Socialist Party were increasingly being seen as a cynical power: seemingly unbeatable only because there was no opposition. This protest changes that perception.

So do not ask who is directing the protest or who is benefiting from it.

Everyone is trying to take something from it.

At least until the protest learns to stand on its own.

Originally published in Albanian as: Tre debate të panevojshme për protestën