By Desada Metaj
Despite the deafening silence these days at the end of the year, the "Balluku" issue is what has plunged political Tirana into deep reflection. Not so much because of the daily, even annoying attacks of Edi Rama — who has not stopped even on days off — nor by Sali Berisha, who with the greatest ease recycles his positions from one day to the next.
Edi Rama has lost much of the brilliance of the great, omniscient and authoritarian leader. The stress of the case in question, starting from SPAK and reaching the Constitutional Court, has diminished him in the eyes of the people and has shown him, too, full of anxiety, vulnerable, in trouble and, apparently, under pressure. He has been stripped of the grandeur of the leading salons of great world politics and has turned into a banal scoundrel who, behind the curtain of the prime minister's window, hits the building opposite the Constitutional Court every day with the lukewarm aim of dictating Thursday's decision.
A few days ago, in his daily ritual of media pollution, Sali Berisha shouted that the Constitutional Court was “Rama’s tool”, a “political tool” to hit Balluk. Then he changed his mind: he came out in defense of that Court, suggesting that it should not even accept the case for review. He changed again today: he asked for a public hearing so that “the people could see the facts of the case”, as if the court were a stage for reading SMS with “balloons”. And today, in the next turn, he emphasizes that the Court made a mistake in accepting the case, because — according to him — it was bowed to Rama’s pressure.
A silent code of communication has long operated between Rama and Berisha. It is not a code for agreement, but a code for destruction: the systematic discrediting of justice. Together, the two, in different ways, are trying to smear SPAK, GJKKO and now the Constitutional Court. This is their common denominator, despite the hypocritical poses they take publicly. Because a justice system perceived as a “tool”, “machine” or “political” loses the most precious thing: the trust of the public. And when trust is lost, every decision — even the most just one — sounds piloted.
Rama and Berisha know this. They do it because sooner or later — and it seems early — both will have to answer to the courts, most likely before the Constitutional Court. The involvement of the Constitutional Court in their spiral of daily politics serves both of them. It is convenient for every justice institution to be smeared with the paint that comes from their headquarters.
What is most surprising is the behavior of the self-proclaimed actors of the “new politics”. Representatives of a model towards which the public projected other, purer and more solid expectations, are coming out naked before the first serious test. So far, there has been no clear, firm and sincere stance regarding the battle between the old politics and the new justice.
Arlind Qori announces a protest in front of the Parliament. The list of populist demands also includes the resignation of Rama and Balluku. The irony? Within that Parliament there is also one of his deputies, who has not uttered a single sentence about justice during all this chaos that has erupted even in the parliament hall.
Agron Shehaj invites you to "Hotel Tirana" for coffee, so that along with an espresso, "the defense of justice can be discussed." Meanwhile, he was the one who, just a few days ago, mercilessly attacked the Constitutional Court, not realizing that without that link, the chain of justice cannot stand.
Adriatik Lapaj, more direct, places the chair in front of the Prime Minister's Office — naive symbolism, but very sincere: the appetite for the chair is there, it cannot be hidden behind moralistic rhetoric. Because a chair seduces anyone.
This is not collective madness. Nor spontaneous delusion. This is a clear symptom that the new politics has not yet understood the transformative power of the new justice, supported by the internationals. They have remained captives of the old 30-year-old psychosis: that even justice can be used, manipulated, influenced.
This is the panorama of politics today: everyone is powerless and a failure. Rama's old myth — that he controls everything and every institution obeys him — is disintegrating. He himself, revolted, justifies public interventions with the phrase: "I am a party to the process." Without realizing that this incriminates himself and makes the intervention even more unacceptable.
Berisha is a political ignoramus. Powerless against justice and, humiliatingly, even against Rama himself, whom he uses as a vital alibi to keep the myth of persecution alive.
Shehaj, Qori and Lapaj are running with their spoons in their belts towards the feast of post-Rama power. They see that the old stage is collapsing and want to occupy the empty chairs that are left behind — without building any new political ethos. Lapaj's chair near the Prime Minister's Office is the purest image of this unbridled appetite.
This is the most serious moral decay of Albanian politics: the widespread belief that change cannot be produced by political actors themselves, but must be brought to them by someone else — justice, internationals, fate, coincidence, or the next crisis.
They no longer believe in political means. They silently admit that they are political failures. And the worst thing: all together they do nothing to hide the 35-year-old old vice of this politics — the thirst for power to use it like the old craftsmen. This is the psychic deformation that has captured the minds of this entire political class, old and new.
Ironically, here lies the greatest achievement of the new justice system: it has unmasked Albanian politics, exposing it as useless and powerless before the public. It has drained the 35-year-old political swamp, leaving it with no room for maneuver.
Therefore, today every link in the justice system — BKH, SPAK, GJKKO, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court — must understand that their mission is not just to crack down on sporadic episodes of corruption or organized crime. More than that, their mission is to make it clear to the political caste that the old era of banal politics is over and that a new way of conceiving and doing politics can be successful in coexistence with justice.
