Not even Edi Rama's threats that he will force them to pay for the damages caused have prevented the students from rejecting for the second day in a row the spectacle of the dialogue staged by the prime minister in front of the government headquarters.
But this time, aware of the rejection, Rama no longer brought out the luxurious purple velvet chairs on the street. Instead, to invite the young people to the dialogue, he chose some simpler ones, but they suffered the same fate as the day before. The students broke them, giving the prime minister once again the message that they have no intention of negotiating his departure.
For the second day in a row, Rama is trying to shift attention from the revolt and police violence to a curated show of chairs, invitations and calls for dialogue. But the response of the young people remains the same: they are not asking for a place to sit opposite the prime minister, but for his removal from power.
The breaking of chairs has thus become a symbolic act of rejection of a prime minister who continues to offer dialogue, while protesters demand political responsibility for the violence inflicted on them.
The more Rama insists on bringing out the chairs to prove that he is willing to talk, the more the students are using them to show him that the problem is not the lack of dialogue, but himself.
