By Indrit Vokshi
Six months ago, Agron Shehaj and Adriatik Lapaj were called Edi Rama's sellouts and his servants. This was officially stated by Sali Berisha!
Shehaj-Lapaj, they do not unite with each other because they have insulted each other; but they unite around Sali Berisha who has insulted and denigrated both of them. They forgive Berisha's denigration more easily than each other. Berisha is okay because his strongest weapon is the threat that if you do not submit to him, he will insult you, denigrate you, call you a sellout to Edi Rama.
And they are afraid of this threat of denigration, just as many MPs before them were afraid, who after the 2023 defeat, went to give him political oxygen to keep him alive, with the pact that he would re-run them on safe lists. Only 6-7 of them regained their mandate. However, the MPs submitted to him with the interest of gaining the mandate.
But these, Shehaj and Lapaj, on what interest do they submit and unite? Since no opposition candidate will win in Tirana, logically Shehaj and Lapaj should enter to reassert their political power, as Arlind Qori is doing. With this scheme, they will not be able to reassert anything, they will not be able to dimension another pole of politics differently, by empowering with votes a new model of politician like Ermal Hasimja. All three parties, Berisha, Shehaj, Lapaj, have an interest in hiding behind each other.
Berisha hides the catastrophe behind them, because he will count their votes as his own. They hide behind Berisha because they hypothetically sell Berisha's votes as their own; as long as it will be unclear how many votes each person has received, each person has the right to claim more than they have. This is made possible by uncertainty.
The new politics has the best face and the deepest confusion. Berisha has the cunning, because he also achieved something else: he managed to neutralize the greatest danger — to highlight a different model within the right wing and to legitimize this model with votes. This is his victory. The others, Lapaj-Shehaj, have not gained anything, they have simply submitted to the need of Sali Berisha.
