14.07.2021 – 09:47
MUSTAFA NANO
For Edi Rama, politics, more than anything else, is a spectacle… And he imagines / defines his role in politics as that of a showman. In other words, it does not matter what you say, but how you say it. In other words yet, it is more important to promote a beautiful lie than to defend a boring truth. He is very style and little substance. And this is so not because there is no substance (there are more than other actors on the political scene), but firstly because he believes in his stylistic power, and secondly because he believes that people in general tend to be drawn to appearance, the facade .
The latter made it clear to us when he had to explain the coloring of the facades of the palaces of Tirana in the 2000s. He spoke on that occasion about the effect of lipstick on poor brides and the effect of colorful facades on the psyche of the inhabitants of Tirana. Based on this feature of his, he entered the election campaign on April 25 to do what the British call character assassination. He had done the same in the election four years ago, ironically defining his opponent as “Good boy, but a little lazy.” The media close to him echoed this finding, and slowly turned it into a stigma on Basha’s back.
At one point, Rama gave his opponent the supposedly benevolent nickname “king”, which he borrowed from the urban jargon of the communist era. The meaning was ancient: good boy. But Tony was paternalistic and contemptuous. He replaced the lazy determinant with a more sensational synonym: “sleep”. The media “confirmed” this quality of Basha with a photo of the latter, where he appears innocently taking a nap on the plane or with news that said that he was returning home to sleep in the afternoon.
Proof of this was the fact that Basha was never seen in the afternoons in the city, in any bar or restaurant, walking on the boulevard or for a jog in the big city park. It was clear what Basha had intended to take from him for family devotion, the socialist propagandists sold him for public lethargy. And not without success. This kind of campaign stuck to some voters. Basha had emerged weak from the elections four years ago. The several-month PD + PS government, which Basha considered in the heat as his victory, more precisely as a guarantee (on the smooth running of the elections) that he “inadvertently” took from his opponent, was then read by many , especially by the Democrats, as a trap that the fox Rama had set up for the lamb Basha.
Most likely, with these definitions (“deceptive” for Rama and “naive” for Basha), the Democrats were feeding a paranoia of their own after the defeat. They did this because they needed an alibi after the loss and the identification of Rama as unscrupulous, treacherous, vile, gave them this alibi. However, inadvertently, they were portraying the leader of their party as gullible and tuhaf, who ate the bait of his opponent as if without harm. Especially when this bait was a piece of power. And that was what Rama used in the last elections. He said during the campaign that he was ready to govern the country at the head of a large coalition PS + PD, implying that he had agreed on this with Basha.
The goal: to convince Democrats that things were copied and that their vote did not matter. There are still people who believe this version and are told that in September, or many next year, Albania will be led by a government with Rama as Prime Minister and Basha as Deputy Prime Minister, although there is no evidence of such a pre-election agreement. . Rama, of course, had to talk about the product of his work. He could not ignore this discussion. He had been Prime Minister for eight years, and for four years holding the helm alone, which he had insisted on. Even the steering wheel, along with the pan, kettle, pie and other gastronomic findings, became the metaphors of his 2017 campaign.
But the promised results were not seen. As if that were not enough, in the last four years, two more tragedies have occurred. However, these two tragedies came to Rama as a “gift from heaven”, they came to him exactly when he had nothing to sell for success and when, for this reason, his enthusiasm was extinguished (Albanians had some time not they thought of nothing but “to leave this place that cannot be done” and to flee to Germany). And it was these tragedies that magically re-motivated and revived him. In the weeks following the devastating earthquake in central Albania, he was seen wandering around Albania, aiming to stay on top of work.
He was seen among the ruins of palaces from morning to evening, where mourning the people, where throwing jokes, turning everything into a show of entertainment and where raising hope for those who had lost everything. In addition, he was seen taking the streets of the world to seek help, which he found. Immediately after the first “joy”, came the second, the COVID-19 pandemic, which he saw as another opportunity to excel. “I will become a beggar for my country,” he was heard to say more than once, and many people, as they watched him come around in shawls and tracksuits, really resembled a beggar.
He made a part of the public believe that “it’s good that he is in charge of things” and that “he is determined to run the country in difficult moments”. Edi Rama, aware of the effect of his deeds during these two tragedies (“joys”), found what to keep for the success of the government. During the campaign he remained in Thumanë a Mamurras to inaugurate residential houses, as well as in Rinas to receive vaccines. Without these two events, he would swim in the dry during the campaign. There would be nothing to say. It would be exposed to opposition attacks. And most likely, he would lose.
* Preface to the book “Unusual Choices & Breaking the Dialectic”, by the publishing house “UET Press”
