By Alba Malltezi
The young members of Albania’s new Parliament must be different. Only if they succeed in being different will we truly be able to say, come September 2025, that we have new deputies in the Albanian Parliament. They must bring with them a virtue that has been absent throughout these decades of freedom—decades tinted with deep shades of anarchy: the restraint from the unbridled right to offend, to slander, to attack, to divide, to insult, to threaten every opponent.
Only when we see a young politician, a young deputy who does not appoint himself judge and prosecutor over anyone who offends or challenges him, will we understand that in his mind Justice and Judgment have been entrusted to the institutions whose duty it is to safeguard balance. We will understand that Justice and Judgment are not his or her private property. Biting one’s tongue to avoid hurling insults—first at colleagues and fellow politicians, then at their families—is not self-censorship, nor is it “bad politics.” It is the refusal to inject poison into the public sphere, among Albanians who lack the tools, the access, or the platforms of a politician, a journalist, or an institutional figure to verify and discern truth from lies.
The young in Albania’s new Parliament must strive hard to be different. Left or right, they must focus on the great desire to be constructive rather than destructive, to listen rather than attack, to be sensitive enough to recognize a good idea even among adversaries, and a worthy goal even among the least likable. The young in Albania’s new Parliament must be unifiers of a small country endlessly fragmented—by foreigners, yes, but most of all by ourselves.
The sad spectacle of some of them during the pre-election campaign—figures who had been looked upon with hope and trust—left many disappointed. Instead of elevating their parties to the level of dreams, it was the parties themselves, and the ambition for quick and unconditional power, that crushed them like grapes under the satisfied feet of old politics.
We will never tire of encouraging the best among us—in politics or in Albanian society at large—which, after its exhausting transition, is in dire need of peace and serenity of both mind and heart. For it is only under the precious and rare notes of balance, of respect between people and institutions, that we can become ever better, finding our rightful and deserved path toward civilization.