There is a paradox that has been repeating for weeks and that says much more about the way the political battle is unfolding than about Edi Rama himself.
When SPAK published two of the strongest files of the last 30 years, those of Aruba and Lalzi Bay, where for the first time the way in which drug trafficking money was injected into construction in Albania was drawn with names, roles and mechanisms, how organized crime, business and power together built the concrete economy, was expected to become the axis of the political battle. It was perhaps the strongest blow with facts given to Edi Rama’s governance model.
But it didn’t happen.
Instead of the opposition parties present at the protest, the opinion leaders, the bloggers and the media that supported it turning this moment into a continuous political offensive against the government, the attention shifted to the aesthetic and communicative elements of the protest. The concern became which meme was the most popular, who had made the post the most viral, which blogger had aged Rama with their posts, who supported him and who was provoking him. As the days passed, the files of Aruba and Lalzi Bay, which should have been at the center of public debate and opposition action, passed almost in silence.
The protest organizers also missed part of this moment. Instead of using the shock created by the files, the mass participation and the citizen anger towards the government to build a clear political platform, an identified representative group and a strategy on how they would impose their demands on the government, the energy was consumed for days with a single refrain: “Do not fall prey to provocations”. An understandable call, but one that could not become the axis of a movement of thousands of people. In every large protest there will be provocations. There will also be attacks on the organizers identified as not being in Sweden. They are not avoided by moral appeal, but by organization, responsibility and political direction.
Now the debate has taken another step away from the essence. It was enough for Edi Rama to put a flamingo in his profile picture and the attention shifted again: “He stole our symbol of the revolution.”
In fact, this is precisely the area where Rama has always been strongest. It is the painter’s favorite trap for his opponents: the facade. He has always had the ability to appropriate the symbols, slogans and narratives of his opponents, empty them of their original meaning and return them to the function of his own propaganda. To challenge him on this terrain means to agree to play the game that he knows very well. And which does not represent any interest of the most important issue to be addressed.
The question is much simpler and much more painful. If Edi Rama was not defeated on the day when thousands of citizens surrounded the Prime Minister’s Office, when the weight of numbers and strength was on the side of the protest, it is futile to believe that he will be defeated with battles over memes, bloggers or profile pictures.
But this does not mean that the battle is lost. On the contrary. The SPAK files remain the strongest political argument ever produced against Edi Rama’s governance model. They do not need more symbolism, but more politics. They do not need a debate about who owns the flamingo, but an alternative that gives citizens the confidence that this system can be realistically challenged.
The protest still has this opportunity. To get out of the trap of memes, symbols and provocations and return to the essence. To talk about the SPAK files, about the connection between organized crime, drug money and power, about the concrete economy and about the model of state capture that those files bring to light. Because the revolution is not won by preserving the flamingo from Edi Rama. It is won by forcing him to face what he cannot assimilate or relativize: the facts.
