Edi Rama's new fable: The mirror for Albanians, millions for themselves

The country's governance has entered a terminal phase, where the prime minister pretends to lead and those below him pretend to listen. Exhausted from ideas and consumed by criminal scandals, Edi Rama is trying to weave a new narrative to postpone his imminent end. But even for this, a former talent of his, he is no longer capable. 

The halls where he speaks resemble funeral homes, where those present keep their heads down in embarrassment while the master of the house does not understand when to be silent. Everyone is aware that the reality outside those halls is completely different from the leader's blather about the increasing expectations of citizens, the lack of empathy of the administration and other schizophrenic nonsense of a man whose fear of a tomorrow without power is destroying even his dignity.

Edi Rama is talking these days about a government that should be close to the problems of citizens, about employment based on merit and not party brokers, about an administration that completes work according to the law and not according to its pocket. He is presenting theses and platforms, radars and mirrors as if he has finally discovered, after 15 years, how he can save Albania. When you listen to the Prime Minister's miserable argumentation, about how he will solve the crisis he has plunged the country into with trust and empathy, the first question that comes to mind is: does he himself believe these banal fabrications?

No matter how much he has undergone transformations from the greed and paranoia of power, Edi Rama's brain processes the fact that the mirror cannot change the fate of his government. On the contrary, every time you look, it will show you the stains of decay of a system that was built on theft and crime. The Prime Minister knows this, just as he knows that he is powerless to lead the country with work and not with words. He has neither the ability nor the energy to realize any part of what he promises or has promised. So he only talks and those below him pretend to listen. And in the meantime, no one works. The government, municipalities, administration... have not functioned for a long time, except when they make their own money. Rama finds himself facing the monster he created himself, trying to appease him with words, in the hope that he will prolong the end.

The entire Renaissance army, which at the moment keeps its head down and pretends to take note of the leader's directives, reads his emptiness and degradation. He asks them to behave like the Spanish conquistadors with the American Indians, to give the Albanians mirrors while they themselves steal millions from them. To show empathy while they rob them daily with incinerator fees, floating tecs, sterilization costs, road taxes and scandalous fines. To keep track of the citizens' troubles, while they count the apartments, villas, hotels and even private jets that they share with great empathy with the businessmen of tenders and concessions. 

The way Edi Rama has governed and the idiotic attempt to sell it as something valuable but which has not been understood as such due to the lack of communication and emotional skills of the administration, is the clearest trace of the schizophrenia of the end of power. It is enough for a single person, from those who pretend to listen with their heads bowed, to stand up and ask a few questions to the leader who is grinding salad, convinced that no one will dare to oppose him. 

In these 15 years, who has selected the ministers, MPs, senior directors or mayors who ended up in prison as ordinary thieves and criminals? What about the scoundrels who controlled everything from the secret service to the top police leaders, did a lack of empathy produce them? What about the drug traffickers who became strategic investors and covered Albania with concrete, the result of not keeping track of the citizens' troubles? 

In the mortuary halls of the renaissance, everyone knows that the Prime Minister's babble cannot change the reality to which they have brought the country. No mirror can reflect an Albania other than the one that actually exists. Those who have been on the boulevard for three months have seen so much in these 15 years that no piece of glass can take their eyes off it. Rama's efforts to produce in the hall and on paper a narrative that can still keep him in power only increase the clash with those who live the daily life of his government. 

The clearest sign when a regime is coming to an end is precisely when the leader speaks of a virtual reality, his followers pretend to give him the benefit of the doubt, while the citizens are in the streets. Albania outside the halls of the Renaissance is the mirror where Edi Rama is terrified to see himself. ©lapsi.al