An explanation for the blind passengers of the "Bulgarian train" with driver Sali Berisha

A month after the May 11 elections in the Democratic Party, we have three streams of claims about manipulation. First is that of Gazment Bardhi, who, although not official, supports the thesis that the elections were bought before May 11. Second, there are a multitude of candidates who have nothing to lose and claim that the Democrats were stolen from among them. And third, we have Sali Berisha who has found a new fable that the elections were stolen on the very day of the elections through the 'Bulgarian train'. That is, according to Berisha, the people were sold out and thousands of Democrats chose money instead of bringing change with Berisha, Noka, Vokshi, Paloka, Balli, Këlliçi and others.

Beyond this ridiculous panorama of the DP's offer on May 11, I want to stop at the 'Bulgarian train' since what Berisha says is more easily embraced on television panels by independent analysts and social media militants, who curse anyone who thinks differently with false comments.

I personally have heard the story of the 'Bulgarian train' since I voted for the first time in 2005. The DP had managed to create a spirit of victory for the last time, supported by the divided SP and many other factors. At that time, there was no name because the internet had not been invented for politics to pretend to know more. It was about the mechanism of exchanging a filled-in sheet in favor of the DP for a blank sheet. Based on this memory of mine, I do not want to anathematize Sali Berisha's victory in 2005, but they only make me understand that the 'Bulgarian train' can only be started by an opposition party that, above all, has created spirit.

The “Bulgarian train” is thought to have been used in Bulgaria in the first pluralist elections where the ruling communists faced the newly born opposition. Since the people were afraid of dictatorship, this form of exchanging blank ballot papers was chosen to create trust and achieve the result. However, this has never been proven to have happened in Bulgaria.

In Berisha's claims, first of all, the 'Bulgarian train' does not technically work. Imagine a democrat who is given a completed ballot for the Socialist Party and asked for a blank one back. The democrat who gives up on Berisha and free elections could add an extra cross to the ballot in favor of the Socialists and put it in an invalid box. No one would know and above all, he would put money in his pocket. And this chain baptized as a train probably would not give Berisha votes, but not to the SP!

Now let's get back to the claims of Sali Berisha, the innkeepers and his blind passengers who keep them on hundreds of hours of television shows.

Believing Berisha's word, Albania is in a narco-dictatorship. Or as he himself says, a dictatorship even worse than that of Enver Hoxha.

Taking this into account, it must be said that in the context of elections in dictatorial regimes, the phenomenon known as the "Bulgarian train" leads to an absolute conclusion: This mechanism can only be used by the opposition and not by the bloody, drug-addicted regime itself.

To understand this, we need to analyze the asymmetric nature of power in a dictatorship. An authoritarian regime controls the state apparatus, electoral commissions, law enforcement, the media, and often even civil society structures. It has the ability to intervene in every link in the electoral process: from the selection of trusted voters to the manipulation of the final result.

In this context, the government does not need to use such primitive methods as the "Bulgarian train". It manipulates more deeply and systematically! With fictitious voters, with institutional pressures, with recent changes in lists, or with deformations of the result through controlled counting. However, Berisha does not accept these as forms of manipulation, hoping that the 'Bulgarian train' in a village in Peqin with 40 votes has deformed the 33 mandates it needs to equal the Socialist Party.

With the 'Bulgarian train', things are normally different for the opposition. Excluded from real power and often prohibited from operating freely on the ground, the opposition in a dictatorial system is forced to use alternative ways to survive politically. The "Bulgarian train" becomes one of the few tools to break the regime's total control over the vote. Its use requires secret networks, complex coordination and mutual trust between voters and opposition structures. That is, a technical scheme to protect the voter against the dictatorship and not to kill him like in April 2021 when in the name of the 'Vote Protection Structure' they took the life of a citizen in Elbasan in vain.

Moreover, the opposition, deprived of access to power, does not have the opportunity to manipulate on an industrial scale like the government. Thus, the “Bulgarian train” remains a means of survival, if not a winning strategy.

The phenomenon of the "Bulgarian train" in a dictatorial country like this one that Sali Berisha described to us since 2013 is a consequence and not a cause of the lack of democracy. It is implemented only by the opposition because there are no other ways to compete in a race that is unequal from the start (as the majority in the DP would say, except for LaCivita and Berisha).

So today we can only salute the train driver for the imaginary journey he is giving us, from Peqin and ending who knows where. Instead of stopping to reflect on his political failure, he continues to sell tickets for a train that, ironically, does not even have tracks.

Perhaps in the next elections, to avoid the 'Bulgarian train', Berisha could propose voting with smoke signals or telepathy. Why not? Who stops the absurd?