FLASH
Shkruar nga Andi Bushati
The prime minister's sin is not the speculation during this month, but the fact that he has produced a media system that he has trampled on...
This beginning of the week was dominated by the media echoes that had two public appearances of the prime minister. The first, his missed meeting with a blogger who is extremely popular among the Galata groups on Instagram and the other which had to do with the re-evocation of his nude photos on a beach in France, here and two decades ago. If you look at both of these events, against the background of the campaign that Edi Rama has launched, they are in complete coherence with the established line of talking about everything except politics.
He started the electoral race with a half-folk, half-talava show, which had nothing to do with the four-year mandate that is ending, much less with the next one. He has chosen as the slogan of this battle, the European passport 2030, which even if some divine miracle happens and becomes a reality, has no connection with the four-year period for which he is seeking votes. If you add to this the focus on figures like the short-eared owl, sexist comparisons against men, the refusal to hold a public debate with his direct rival, or the ban on all Rilinda candidates from confronting the opposition in television studios, it is easy to understand that the head of government seeks to impose an electoral challenge without content and substance.
Of course, Edi Rama has done his calculations well. The only thing he will avoid is the real balance sheet for the four years of governance, or for the last decade as a whole. He is aware that even those few successes, which can be counted on the fingers of a hand, all have some stain behind them.
Let's take for example one of them related to the works carried out by Rama 3, the Llogara tunnel. It is true that those who would choose to defend him in a television studio could mention the boost he gives to tourism on the Albanian Riviera, the proximity of the city of Vlora to the wonderful shores of the Ionian Sea, etc. But, if this Renaissance propagandist had an opponent or critic in front of him, the bubble would quickly deflate. Suffice it to mention the public testimony of the former deputy prime minister, who claimed to have seen with his own eyes that, during the tender, no less than 50 million Euros were stolen.
This hypothetical episode would be identical to almost all government "failures," not to mention those where millions have been poured in but the "work" does not exist at all.
Precisely, to avoid such incidents, to erase from the campaign the confrontation with shocking facts such as the imprisonments of Koka, Beqaj, Ahmetaj or Veliaj, to avoid talking about luxury villas or apartments with hidden names, tenders with fines of up to 40%, theft of EU funds, the vanity of wives who spend hundreds of thousands of euros on interiors, Edi Rama is trying to turn the May 11 challenge into a gala.
At first glance, there is no major anomaly here. In an electoral race, each challenger has the right to choose the strategy that suits him best. The one that hides his flaws and covers his sins. No one can claim that a prime minister will go on a campaign trail to tell voters "here I was wrong", "these are my weak points".
In a normal society, in a country that claims to be democratic, the media is condemned to play this role. They are the ones who should become watchdogs, to protect the public from the lies of the politicians who are in charge.
So let's put it bluntly, the blame here does not fall solely on Rama who will manipulate us, but on the big TVs that enable him to do so. The prime minister's sin is not the speculation during this month, but the fact that he has produced a media system that he has trampled on.
Enough of watching the main news and daily political shows every night on the evening screens. The stale topics are: Will the new parties succeed? Will Shehaj-Llapaj defeat them? Is a new opposition being created? Will Berisha leave or lose? The only topic missing is just one more.
On a show facing panelists who support this government, I asked them a simple question. Have you seen any special on the news that takes stock of the four-year government? Have you seen any important dinner show that has as its topic: “how have we been governed these four years”? Of course, I didn’t get an answer. There has never been one like that and there never will be. So imagine for a moment. A campaign can begin and end without debating the most basic, most normal, most inevitable topic: what is the four-year balance of the one who is asking for our votes again. Televisions and evening shows “have the freedom” to discuss at length the fate of those parties, which all together will not even be able to capture ten deputies, they are preoccupied with the future of the opposition, whose impact on the lives of Albanians is close to zero, but they are not allowed to address what concerns us all. And this happens because some, from the political order and some more "honest" from self-censorship, cannot step on a land forbidden by the leader.
How normal this is, neither the OSCE-ODIHR nor the civil society NGOs that monitor the elections need to say. Everyone understands that. Everyone knows that although he claims to have entered this race without a coalition, Rama is allied with the 5 family businesses that control over 90% of the television audience in the country. He is competing hand in hand with those who give concessions and building permits under fictitious names and whose files are closed when they have problems in SPAK. Therefore, he has the luxury of running a grand campaign without giving an account and without taking stock of what has happened so far.
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