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After water utilities, OSHEE, waste and oil, Edi Rama is building public super-enterprises that centralize billions of euros; a strategy to eliminate economic rivals and turn himself into the sole chief oligarch...
Edi Rama, after his third term, has entered a new phase of escalating power, nationalizing and centralizing all important public entities with high budgets. After OSHEE was nationalized in the first term and the vehicle inspection concession was nationalized in the second term, the appetite for state control has grown more and more. Rama created the gas consortium and announced the creation of a public giant for the management of water utilities, although there is a central entity that oversees them. This new entity will collect all citizens' payments for water services. Recently, Rama has announced another reform: the concentration of all waste processing, including landfills, incinerators and other technologies, all under the same hand, in a national enterprise. He also hinted that the government will also take control of the retail distribution of oil, after nationalizing several other services previously such as labeling and mass control.
These steps have created some monstrous administrative structures that will have in their hands a huge amount of public money. In principle, the state has the right to control strategic assets, but the main question is who represents this state and who controls these assets. In a democratic country with strong institutions, this control would be balanced by a parliament of real representatives and not militants. Models in the region, such as in Croatia or Serbia, show that the approaches are different.
Croatia, as an EU country, has a more representative and less polarizing democracy. President Zoran Milanović, a Eurosceptic and pro-Russian socialist, is at the polar opposite of the pro-Western and Atlanticist Christian Democrat Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. The two elected authorities balance each other out, creating a balance and a compulsion for compromise.
Serbia, by contrast, is an authoritarian model. Aleksandar Vučić controls the government, local government, parliament, and public enterprises, filling the boards with his own people and those of his close clan. This is a model imported by Putin to Russia, who eliminated recalcitrant oligarchs and created “public” enterprises that managed billions, becoming the country’s chief oligarch himself. Today, Putin controls almost every aspect of Russian citizens’ lives.
If this scheme is applied in a country with less than 2 million inhabitants like Albania, it is enough to control three layers: the administration, pensioners and public enterprises. With this so-called reform, it is not surprising that the majority seeks to expand control even in sectors where private oligarchs currently dominate. The episode with the Vlora airport and Pacolli seems like a warning to large companies: to think carefully before challenging Rama's power. The models of Russia or Lukashenko show that this complete control of public entities is nothing more than placing the state at the service of a narrow clan./ Pamphlet
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