Today has been a busy day, at least for my cell phone. Hundreds of messages and phone calls, from congratulations to surprises. Normal flow of things, actually. And, I'm not writing this 'last' editorial in Politico, teased by the messages; nor to unload on this communication the burden of decision, but to say that in the life of a professional, there always comes a day when he has to face his sermons. Choose to live or continue to priest them.
The opening was the main sermon of the editorials and TV debates where I participated, implying as such the 'emergence' of the DP in society and the 'introduction' of society in the DP. With many other colleagues, we have asked this, on a separate name, to Sali Berisha, sometimes as an obligation, sometimes as a diversion, sometimes as a provocation, and sometimes as a mission.
The question is what do you do with your sermon when he turns and knocks on your door. You will let him discover you as a diversionist, as a hypocrite or as someone who sees, in the opposition in this case, a colossal investment of public interest. Even more so in a country like Albania, where almost everything speaks under the leadership of the government and the political, administrative and conjunctural majority that accompanies it.
That day always comes.
Opening, opening, opening. But who does the opening, who should and can do it? There are those who will expect the opening to blossom and, when it is in fruition, to hurry with the baskets ready to reap what on the horizon looks like the idea of power and its benefits.
There are those who fear America and non grata. Do you say that those who are, those who want, and those who will join a DP in the difficulties of this stigma, do it to declare war on America. Are you saying that the PD, led by Sali Berisha, were not the ones who ended the war with America, exactly that total madness started by the predecessor of that other party that now plays the American, with the same ease that once threw the Yugoslav, the Soviet and Chinese.
It is not, of course, the opening of the DP with society the only one that this force has a duty to communicate and do. It is also the closure of Albania in front of the noses of all those thousands of compatriots who are fleeing. From frustration, from impossibility, from hopelessness, and so on. Communicating Albania that is being emptied and filling the vessel of hope is not an easy task. Nor the stagnation of the country at the gates of integration. Neither the communication of the 'Albanian dispute' in the Balkans and the work to turn it into an agreement.
Can all this be done that seems easy to say? Our parties do not have a mission statement or a credo. Which they should have. Sali Berisha articulates one, with the burden of his deeds, a liberating line, and a hindering line.
Liberation from both, from the greatness that the worshipers repeat to him with words and handshakes, as well as from the 'hundred evils' that the opponents recite to him, can turn him, once again, into a leader who understands time and especially himself in relation to to.
For the author of these lines it is the first time. For him this is the third time. In this sense, for openness to be understood as opening he needs many first-time people, many first-time acts, many first-hand transformations.
This is the force of change that can be communicated. This is the communication that can change it.
Sali Berisha is meanwhile a historical leader. It is no longer the story required of him, but the opposite: the exit from it. Only with the story behind you can not even open or reinvent.
So how can a man be both a tradition and a future?