On the protest’s popularity and its objectives

Edi Rama has confused everyone by trying to explain the social-media algorithm and how it relates to the “truths” of the protest.

Since then, the media against Rama has found its own algorithm heroes: a former Big Brother contestant, and the luxury cars — mostly Range Rovers and other expensive vehicles — being driven by the boys from London as they head to Albania.

I believe both are winners of the algorithm.

In the first days, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner did even more for the protest.

Psychologically, the protest has become a place of pilgrimage for anyone who feels life has failed them and is convinced that failure would not exist without this government and this opposition.

It has become the biggest alibi for the despair of people in this country — even emigrants driving luxury cars.

Albania has never had a platform like this before: a nationwide Big Brother showing what has happened to Albanians over the past 35 years.

No one can beat that algorithm.

But this is about the protest’s popularity, not its objectives.

The popularity battle has been won many times over, far beyond the protest’s real strength against the government. If medals are being handed out today, they can go to Ivanka and Kushner, to the Big Brother girl, to the cars of the London boys, to anyone.

The government should not enter this race.

It does not need to. The fact that the protests look far bigger and more popular than they really are is not, by itself, a reason to panic.

As things stand, the protest should not worry the government simply because it has borrowed heroes: some arriving by bus from Kosovo, some in luxury cars from London, some through Instagram and Facebook, and some through serious international media.

The protest has its own agenda. Today that agenda has been lent to emigrants in luxury cars cruising along the boulevard, most of them Democratic Party members, supporters of Albin Kurti or the VLEN coalition from North Macedonia. Before leaving, some even posted videos with horses and flags, as if they were setting off to liberate Albania.

Tomorrow, there may be other actors and other heroes.

The government has no reason to get involved with either the borrowed heroes or the borrowed actors.

It will have to deal with the protest when it faces its spirit at the ballot box, and when real political actors emerge as its representatives.

Until then, the Big Brother show will go on.

And the debate about ratings is meaningless.

The government has only one job: to deal with the protest’s objectives.

That is where Big Brother ends and politics begins.

Originally published in Albanian as: Për popullaritetin e protestës dhe objektivat e protestës