By Ben Andoni
The closed lists of the PS and PD, our two major parties in the main regions, have truly revealed the physiognomy of political groups aiming to get closer to power or seeking it. The most followed and the hardest workers will be on the Open Lists, while those on the Closed Lists will vegetate.
The militants will be forced to be enslaved for the votes of the factions, and the party leaders will reap the rewards, elevating their own cults (with their pathetic speeches). Nobel laureate José Saramago, the renowned author of Blindness, described something very similar, though with a slightly different, pyramid-like social framework. He said: “The distribution of tasks among different workers follows a simple rule: the task of the members of each category is to do as much work as possible, so that only a small portion of that work makes it to the higher category. This means that ordinary employees (read: workers-militants) are forced to work tirelessly from morning to night, while the officials (the small bosses) do so occasionally, those above them but below the boss (the party bosses’ representatives: the heads of the regions) very rarely, and the officer (the Party Leader) almost never.” The list only misses the paradox because the leaders go to the field and speak as if they haven’t been face-to-face with the Albanians, whom they have been deceiving for the last four years.
On May 12th, we will witness, after the completion of the elections, the full configuration of these lists and the many consequences of the discontent that have already been voiced by certain party figures over their placements. However, with the certification of the elections, there are likely to be many more. The first reason is that some people only know how to do a job that has often proven not to be a real job, as they are simply card-raisers in parliament, while the second is linked to the loss of benefits, which translates to a lack of power for those in parliament. The comparison between our deputies and Saramago’s structure remains accurate, as today’s politics is not understood as work, but as a way to work as little as possible while maximizing personal gains. The consequences are well known and are evident in the social-economic indicators of the country and the simple Albanians.
