By Sokol Balla
My final word is an obligation—because in three hours, the electoral campaign begins, and the outdated Albanian electoral law leaves little room for opinions during it. It turns the campaign into a sterile pharmacy, with a colorless, scentless scale. But in reality, every campaign has its colors, and every development within it, its own scent. And not always a pleasant one.
These are not our first elections, and they certainly won’t be the last. But so far, each round of elections has been bound to the previous and the next by one distinct feature: they’ve all been marked by time we’ve lost—as a people.
We’ve lost time by placing our trust in one party or the other. We’ve entrusted them even when they’ve lied to us, disappointed us—more than once. Many of us, for that very reason, haven’t voted in the past—and chances are, this campaign kicking off tomorrow won’t change our minds either. But in fact, we should vote. Or if not, we should at least remain silent for the next four years.
This year brings a novelty: the elections seem more numerous. That’s because SPAK has sharpened our civic vigilance regarding the quality politics offers us—whether in government or opposition. The launch of the new justice system has begun to separate perception from fact.
On May 11, when we go to vote, political parties will offer us a not-so-small number of candidates—indicted, under investigation, or suspected of corruption. I believe these candidates should not be voted for. In fact, they should have chosen not to run themselves. But this is the political Albania of May 11: three defendants are leading the coalition of “Glorious Albania.” Two of them are in guaranteed spots on the list.
But these elections offer a second novelty: the rest of the candidate lists are open. And there, you decide.
In these open lists, both major political blocs include names with open cases. You have the power to clean up those lists. I believe that finally, thanks to the new justice system and the accelerated path toward EU integration, our political system is beginning to open up. A responsible civic vote—one that distinguishes the clean from the corrupt, doubt from fact, rumor from reality—can ensure that by the 2029 elections, our political system will be fully open. And I sincerely hope those will be the last elections before our entry into the European Union.
DON’T WASTE THIS MOMENT.
Now, you may rightfully ask: will this truly happen? Can the EU really accept this Albania as it is today?
I hope that for geopolitical reasons, for our achievements—but also for a more practical one—this will happen in 2030. Because we will become better by being inside the EU, as we’ll be held to stricter rules, under tighter scrutiny.
We won’t join the EU because we’re 100% ready, but because we’ll get there faster from within than by crawling along outside. We’ve spent three decades doing just that—crawling—and all we’ve done is waste time.
As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But if someone fools us a third time, it’s no longer just shame—it’s a crime against our future and our children.
Without meaning to judge anyone—not even Sali Berisha—it must be said: the Democratic Party, paradoxically, cannot be saved even by our votes. It has synchronized its clock to the biological clock of its leader. We must let time do its work.
I believe the Democratic Party will rediscover itself, but as a citizen, I no longer have time to waste on it.
Now someone might say—and rightly so—what if someone manages to fool us a fourth time?
True. If in 2030 we don’t join the EU, we must hold ourselves accountable for having been duped once again—into wasting more time. But is there an alternative?
As I said earlier, the open lists give us the power to teach even a political party a lesson—by forcing it to clean house and sober up. To purge itself of those stained—not in their biographies, but in the eyes of justice.
I don’t want to repeat myself. But I do have one last concern: I think politics must also be cleansed of chameleons and hypocrites—especially those who leap across the rainbow.
I look on with sadness as the Socialist Party lists include leftovers from the Democratic Party—its parasites. I don’t believe these people deserve to be voted for.
I believe the Socialist open lists include enough capable women and men who do deserve to represent us. The open lists allow us to eliminate the wheeler-dealers, the sleazy, and the unscrupulous—those who didn’t even deserve the Democratic Party, let alone the Socialist one.
This is not called “Renaissance.” It’s simply a waste of time—and a waste of a vote.
Someone may ask: so in this case, does that mean I’ll vote Socialist?
To that, I have a simple answer: I don’t think Edi Rama needs my vote. He has plenty to govern Albania for another four years. But I sincerely hope his promise of EU integration by 2030 isn’t just another electoral farce.
But there is one thing that makes me impatient to see the results of May 11: the faces of those who will disappear from active politics—thanks to your vote.
Some idiot who thinks he’s Silvio Berlusconi. Some megalomaniac who believes he can become Prime Minister through Facebook.
But above all, I want the vote of Albanians to erase from the public stage the political criminals.
Political criminals are those who killed hope—who sold out the opposition for petty, selfish interests, or because they’re simply both criminals and political idiots.
These elections, too, offer Albanians the chance to bring into Parliament people who don’t see politics just as a career—but as a vocation, maybe even a mission.
So what I hope happens in these elections is a bottom-up catharsis of the political scene. Not a hypocritical one like Nano’s 25 years ago. Not Berisha’s so-called opening in 2005. Not a “Renaissance” forged by the immoral merging of the left in 2013. Nor the result of Lulzim Basha’s shady deals in 2017.
This time, I hold on to one more hope: that the quarter-million fellow citizens voting from abroad will bring a European breath to the Albanian vote—a demand for accountability, rather than submission and manipulation by politics.
Because I believe the time has come for politicians to understand that when we vote for them, we’re renting them the people’s house for four years—not giving them the deed to it.
Because I believe Albanians have always voted correctly. Always.
And they’ll do it again on May 11.
