A prosperous nation? – The quest continues

By Alfred Kola

I have always loathed the fatalist comments about Albania and the people who made them. I couldn’t stand expressions like "Albania is never becoming a prosperous nation!", "This country is cursed!", "Albanians are doomed to suffer!", or even the references that people made to the saying of the iconic figure of Albanian culture Faik Konica "Here I say Albania, screw you! / for what you’re doing, I never got a clue!". I had an unshaken optimism that the time had come for us, Albanians, to take our well-deserved place among other western nations, that the apostolic rallying cry "We want Albania to be like Europe" would be the leading slogan in the challenges that we would face in the course of accomplishing this difficult mission. However, since the outset, like most Albanians, I realized that things were not going as we hoped, that people without the basic education and notorious for ties with the underworld were becoming Chiefs of Police Departments and rising to leading position in administration, diplomacy, customs and tax offices, even in education and justice. The rise of ignorance to dominating positions and the consequences that followed that, spurred in me rage and revolt, but I believed that fair competition would edge them out and time would throw them in the dumpster as leftovers of a chaotic transition. This firm belief was reinforced by a strange event that occurred to me at that time. I came across a charity truck, loaded with university books, donations of American universities for institutions in Albania, and the driver very angry of the fact that, although he had been to every school in the area, all had refused to take the cargo and he was about to dump them in a canal and go home. I was appalled at the driver’s decision and talked him into giving the cargo to me. After selecting a wide range of books for my personal library I gave the remaining books, which truth being told were really in large number, out to high school and college students that I met in the street or I knew before. And it was heartbreaking to see, days later, that, pages of the book "American Government – Freedom and Power", the most complete work on American government by authors Lowi & Ginsberg, were serving as paper wrap for sunflower seeds or pies that people sold on the sidewalk stands throughout the city and surroundings. Since I mastered English very well I started to eagerly cram the economics and politics books to better understand what I expected to happen in Albania, and by all means, the elimination of unskilled officials were an unavoidable process.

Then the "national madness" of fraudulent pyramidal schemes began to unfold. Albanians were so eager to give money away that they paid people in need considerable sums to hold the line for them, in the collecting facilities. The sight of those people standing in line, often pushing and shoving, impatient to throw away their savings from the hard work in emigration or from the sale of their children’s houses and future, still haunts me like an ugly vision that will never go away of an unprecedented madness in history and an unmatched national disgrace. At that time, being a huge fan of CNN, which often aired editorials and analysis of what was going on in Albania with those financial schemes and warned of their indisputable collapse, I tried hard to talk people out of it, but to no avail. To my appeals to them to reason rationally, that resembled those of John the Baptist in the desert, my acquaintances responded with jokes and insults saying that I couldn’t get the hang of these things and that those dummy foundations were created to help Albanians become rich very quickly. What a legendary gullibility!

The outcome of this madness was the 1997 tragedy. It is widely known as the turmoil of ’97, but in terms of casualties and long-term implications it had for the country, it really deserves to be called a civil war. As odd as it may sound, my optimism, instead of waning soared to new heights. It was a great shake-up that proved to everybody that Albanians would no longer take the tyranny and the rotten hogwash served to them as democracy and freedom. Now we had a new leader who would lead us toward economic prosperity and integration in the European family. The years rolled like the wheel of fortune, but the arrow never pointed to the Prosperity zone. Political and factional disputes over who was the boss, the smothering corruption, poverty and unemployment, dubious sales of national assets, inexistent infrastructure and shattered justice. These are what our new leader unhesitatingly provided for us, as pay-off for the blood that was shed to get him out of prison and catapult him to the chair of the chief. Before long, it turned out that the person we had pinned our hopes on, for a bright future, was nothing but a belated and inebriated mini-playboy, who did the best to make up for the lost time of unexperienced pleasures with a behavior that made him ridiculous and scornful. At this point, for the first time my optimism, like that of millions of Albanians, was shaken at its foundations, but it didn’t wither, because, although I lost my faith in governments and politics, I still had boundless faith in my people, in those good-hearted, brave and hard-working people. I was confident that we would bring the change ourselves. The long years of the battle for democracy and prosperity, I thought, would have made these people aware of the fact that they held the fate of the politicians in their hands, not the other way around; I believed that the sense of belonging to a community would have brought these people closer to one another; that the aspiration of a European Albania would be stronger than the temptation of a job or position, offered like a piece of meat thrown by the hunter at his retriever. But time and years that streamed away, dirty like the waters of our violated rivers, proved me utterly wrong. The long tough years of the transition, the prevailing oriental mentality and the decay of every social morale had brought these people to their knees. My early expectation that the ignorant and corrupt officials would be eliminated by competition was never materialized. On contrary, this segment of the population controlled every cell of the society and had grown, both in size and content. They had even opened universities to bring up generations of their own species.

No one in the glorious year of 1990 would have ever imagined that Albania would be here, where it is in 2011. But here we are, 21 years later, farthest than ever from our dream of an Albania like Europe, extremely poor and completely hopeless. It seems like we moved in an orbital trajectory to end up right where we started. But, how did it happen? Are we really cursed in our own land?

I am not prone to believe in a curse stemming from history. Nor am I prone to believe in the legend of this people being doomed for eternity to have on top a government that always oppresses it. But I am completely prone to believe in the INDIFFERENCE and the UNACCOUNTABILITY of the Albanians, traits that, although we are not willing to admit, lie in the foundations of our national character. The unconcern for the importance of one vote as the form of participation in the fates of the nation and the civic irresponsibility to respect it as the individual will lead to electoral frauds, purchase and sale of votes and nasty political deals with a wide impact on the country. The fatal consequences of this is the rise and staying in power of feudal-like individuals of all political wings and colors, who play with the nation like with their own fief, precisely because of the indifference of Albanians toward the sense of nation and the accountability to provide a better country and a brighter future for the generations that follow. It is the combination of these traits, I argue, that has made possible the domination of the Albanian state, in its centennial history, by only four men who have acted towards the nation like towards their own private property, bringing only poverty and misery to the people. It’s the unaccountability of the judge, the physician, the teacher, the policeman, the mayor, the minister, the manufacturer, the businessperson and the people itself that Albania is in this chaotic situation, where the law is not respected nor feared. As for the removal of the old caste of politicians only by elections, that’s a big fat lie. If a government, even when elected by popular vote, becomes tyrannical, oppresses the people and acts against the national interest, it is forced out by the sovereign people without waiting for the Election Day and the members of such government are punished according to the law. This is sanctioned in every constitution of the world in the model of the American one.

"But will Albania ever become prosperous?" – a question that Albanians have asked themselves for centuries, as if they were waiting for someone to come and make it after their tastes. To our shame, this question is the name of the game even today, in the era of worldwide prevalence of the ideals of freedom, justice and economic prosperity for all. The perspective is dark and only a miracle coming from the Albanian people becoming aware of their homeland’s future, will brighten this perspective. I, personally, will not answer this question but I will gladly invite you to express your opinion. After all, everything depends on us, doesn’t it?