By Fitim Zekthi
The Democratic Party has long since entered a very dangerous trajectory for itself and for the opposition in the country. Its most serious problem is not the dire situation, but the inability to see and recognize the dire situation. It is the largest and only party that has the potential to serve as a force that can overthrow or as a force around which all opposition factors can gather to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Rama.
An opposition party, in principle, from the first day it falls into opposition tries to do some basic things, which when election day comes after four years, it will win the elections.
The first thing is finding the right narrative, defining the right discourse, focusing on the right problem that the country has.
The second thing is building a democratic atmosphere within the party, building an environment where everyone feels good and respected, building an internal space for debate and discussion where everything is said freely and without shame.
The third thing is taking one by one the groups of voters who in principle vote for the opposition party and articulating the issues that make these groups vote for the opposition when election day comes.
There are many more, but these were the words of David Lidington, a former leader of the Conservative Party who won the elections with David Cameron in Britain in 2010. He brought the experience of his party, which suffered for 13 years in opposition, and said that the Conservative Party did these things badly.
The Democratic Party of Albania and its leader Sali Berisha are not doing these things badly. They do not have them at all in mind, they do not have them on their agenda at all. They have been doing the opposite for a long time, they are constantly making things worse.
The Democratic Party and its leader always do the same thing and they do it badly. The political language of the DP is conflictual, radical, without substance on right-wing ideas and values, it is a language that does not mark the problems and does not identify solutions for the country. It is a language that shifts the problem, shifts the responsibility, it is an excuse language regarding the responsibilities of the DP and it is a totally denunciatory language.
As such, this language can never be addressed broadly to society. This language will increasingly be addressed to a shrinking portion of society. The DP has not identified one or two or three issues that are at the heart of the country's problems and identify solutions to them. These should also be the issues that concern society the most. The DP talks about corruption and crime, drugs and the mafia and constantly denounces people from the ruling majority. Corruption and crime are indeed terribly widespread, but this cannot be the main issue of the opposition's political articulation. If this were the case, this should be accompanied day and night by how the DP would solve it and convince people not only that this is the issue, but that the solution that the DP provides is the best and most feasible solution from the DP. This has not happened. The DP has not said anything serious to convince society how it will solve this.
Regarding the internal atmosphere, the DP has not created a democratic environment where free elections are held, where competition is free, where debate is free, where speech is free, where there are no enemies and traitors. On the contrary, the DP has built an internal environment that is both poisonous and acidic at the same time. The environment does not allow anything other than the language and narrative of the president to come to life. Regarding the social groups that are or could be natural voters of the DP, we have nothing. The DP does not have a reliable language or register for businesses, workers, the persecuted, owners, farmers, or students. There are only words or sentences disconnected according to context. With the way it is heading towards the election of the president and the way it is making things worse, it resembles Mikhail Bulgakov's famous dialogue in the book The Master and Margarita.
In this wonderful work by Mikhail Bulgakov, there is an extraordinary dialogue between Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz and Ivan Bezdomny, one a writer and the other a publisher. One says: “Imagine becoming a mayor, being a leader, leading, commanding, having power. Then you learn that you have lung cancer. You start to feel terrible. Bobo is losing everything. Your family members start lying. You go to the most famous doctors.
Then you go to folk healers. Then you go to fortune tellers. You try to find a cure in the strangest and most irrational ways. No one cares about you anymore and you don’t even care about your family members. This kind of illness continues and then you find yourself in a wooden box. This is the inevitable path.”
This is happening in the DP. She has learned that she has lung cancer. She is devastated and is looking for a solution. She seems to be following completely irrationally (wanting to protect the internal power she has) completely ridiculous advice and "cures", even fortune tellers. She and her chairman are filled and covered with lies that the people on the team give her, who make her happy in vain. As in Bulgakov's dialogue, the DP and the chairman do not care at all about the people on the team, for the members of the DP and for Albania, but only care about themselves. With this path, the chairman of the DP and the DP will end up politically in a wooden box as in Bulgakov's dialogue.
