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The Phenomenology of the American Embassy Statement

2025-05-31 15:56:39Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA ROLAND LAMI
The Phenomenology of the American Embassy Statement
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The US Embassy's statement "We congratulate the people of Albania on the parliamentary elections and look forward to continuing our close partnership with Albania", has been accompanied by comments from all important political actors, analysts, journalists and even ordinary people on social networks. What is worth analyzing in this case are two aspects: the variety of interpretations of the statement and the importance given to a routine statement by the US Embassy.

The wealth of interpretations of the statement is to be envied. It was not the fault of the semiotic theorist Roland Barthes who said that we should not seek to discover the “true message” but to analyze the way the text plays with meanings, how it interacts with the reader, and how it creates space for interpretation, debate, resistance or acceptance. If we were to use Barthes's glasses to understand the message of the statement, we would have to say that the statement does not “speak for itself”, but is “spoken” by different readers who produce different meanings based on their political, cultural and social position.

The left and its media outlets have echoed the statement, considering it a US stance that legitimizes the electoral process and the majority that emerged from these elections. A statement that is attached to the congratulations of the leaders of important EU countries immediately after the May 11 elections.

The right wing, on the other hand, has taken advantage of the fact that it is different in formulation from that of the 2021 elections, not addressing political entities but only the people, delayed in time as a statement, unlike any other time, implying that they have reservations about the electoral process in Albania.

Analysts on the other hand further enrich the meaning of the statement with their interpretations from several perspectives. Some emphasize the keyword "people" as intentional, implying a distancing from political entities and a long-term alliance with the sovereign, others see it from a geostrategic point of view, reading it as a change in foreign policy course not only in the region but also more broadly, others as a comprehensive statement without nominating any specific name or entity based on the expectations that political entities have to later instrumentalize the statement. Others go even further, stating that the statement cannot go into details or a position on election standards, since this is done by specialized institutions for electoral processes such as the OSCE - ODIHR.

In short, everyone has their own interpretation of the statement. A cacophony of interpretations where everyone finds themselves and can use it as they wish. So much so that even representatives of the American Embassy are surprised by the fantasy, complexity, variety and meaning they attribute to a press statement.

So far, there is nothing extraordinary or incomprehensible as long as it is the language itself that stimulates these nuances of meaning and interpretation. The main problem that has been and continues to be even after 34 years of political pluralism is the lack of internal institutional legitimacy, and the dependence on international support or "certification", especially for electoral processes. This dependence has replaced the rule and legal mechanism of accountability, and has made Albanian democracy deeply supervised and not self-governing.

This moral certificate required by internationals for elections is a concept that encapsulates one of the most significant phenomena of hybrid or fragile democracy in countries like Albania, the lack of internal institutional legitimacy, which is compensated for by external approval, especially by international partners. Only domestic institutions can give full and sustainable legitimacy to elections in the eyes of Albanian citizens. A state that is unable to organize and certify its own elections calls into question its functional independence. Cooperation with internationals is useful for technical support, monitoring and advice, but the final authority to declare the validity of an electoral process must be exclusively domestic.

No EU or OSCE member state delegates election certification to internationals. In fact, internationals do not even participate in any procedural phase of election administration in Western countries. What happens is parallel reporting on standards and independent assessments, which help improve processes, but do not replace local institutions. This is what should worry us as we are presented with the project of Albania’s EU membership in 2030.


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