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Between an intellectual and a prisoner: What's wrong with Albania?

2026-07-16 20:35:27Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA LUTFI DERVISHI

This is the question foreign journalists are asking most often these days, as they watch a protest that has reached its 47th day. The answers are ready: the decline of democracy, the environment, corruption, the crisis of trust. All of them are part of the truth.

But sometimes, the truth emerges most clearly not in elaborate analyses, but in the stories of two people who have nothing in common. The two spoke yesterday, July 15, 2026.

The first is an intellectual who has lived in France for 35 years.

"When I come here, life costs me more than in Paris. I left this country with pie and I'm finding it with pie. When I see how people live, my flesh shudders. There is a small clique in offices and institutions that is well paid, but I can't understand how the ordinary Albanian feeds. How does he manage to make ends meet? I don't even want to start talking about pensioners."

The second is a prisoner who has just crossed the threshold of his cell. He holds some containers in his hands and stops in front of the reporters' microphones.

"What are you going to do now that you're out?"

“I don’t know.”

"How will you support your family?"

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

"Why did you take these dishes with you?"

"I'll be back soon. Why, I'll buy them again?"

"Didn't you learn a lesson in prison?"

"Like prison is a lesson? What does the word lesson mean? Does it teach a person not to survive? Can you calculate this? First of all, we are slaves of God who wants to live, then we are slaves of the law."

The journalist asks him if he has had any financial problems. He smiles bitterly.

"Yes, everyone has economic problems. You have problems too. You are a slave like me, but you are a house slave. House slaves are a little more pampered, they have a chance of survival, while the common people have not yet solved this part."

This is where the conversation stops and perhaps here part of the persistent protest begins to be understood.

Yes, people have come out for the environment, for democracy, for the rule of law, for the way decisions are made. All of these have their weight.

But beneath all this lies a simple question: can a person live with dignity?

When a lady coming from Paris is horrified by the way the average Albanian survives, and a man who has just been released from prison finds his cell more predictable than life outside, the problem is no longer just economic. It is a crisis of hope.

Perhaps that's why the protest continues on its 47th day. Not because all the protesters think alike, but because many of them share the same anxiety: that it's becoming increasingly difficult to live normally in your own country.

In the end, only the prisoner's question remains unanswered:

"Does the vaki make a person learn not to survive?" And perhaps this is the most honest answer to the question: what's wrong here?


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

The sofa man

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Nga Thoma Gëllçi / 2026-07-07 16:29:51Point of Views

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