Am I the only one who finds the appointment of the former Secretary General of LSI as the Deputy Chairman of the Tirana Municipal Council unbelievable? Doesn’t anyone else notice the decline of every human value into the swamp of hypocrisy and self-interest? Endriti is just one among many — yet another symptom of the cancer eating away at our country from within — and it has nothing to do with political colors.
We are facing a system where every ideal has fallen, where character is twisted without reflection, and anyone who can perform an acrobatic leap from one table to another is rewarded—even if they have spat on it before. Doesn’t it embarrass you, for example, when you watch the video of Frrok Çupi, who initially called Rama an uneducated ignoramus (when he was in opposition) and later praised him as a talented person of noble origin (when he was in power)? And don’t you feel uncomfortable when you see former opposition figures suddenly appearing as deputy ministers in the government? Don’t you have any reaction to the dozens of names and faces you’ve seen on your screens for years and years—exhausting years—while they change doors from week to week without any problem?
Here’s how it works: they enter through one door, throw mud at the door opposite, and as soon as they’re chased away from the first, they knock on the second. Or they offer themselves—this seems to be the more common scenario. There, they are not punished but rather the mud is wiped away and a seat is reserved for them at the corner of the table. And then? You see them every day on TV, in the media, on podcasts. The same people who have no shame, no color in their cheeks, no trace of conscience for the words they once spoke or the stances they once took. Videos and memes exposing them don’t faze them because they no longer have a face to blush. What values do they invoke every night in front of the people?! (It seems to me that the many TV hosts, podcasters, and portals play the role of circus ringmasters in the distant Mississippi, where in public humiliation games, they would take Black slaves, put their heads through a white hoop, and the audience paid to satisfy their hatred by throwing dirt and food as entertainment. Today, hosts invite and publish these types as a way for the public to vent not with tomatoes or eggs, but with insults and curses, which nonetheless translate into payment in the form of clicks).
But in a normal country, such people would not be accepted in any form of public representation for two or three generations. Because the absence of dignity is a threat to democracy itself. And the problem is not a name. It’s not Endriti. It’s the system that operates through deals, planned silence, and rewards for the “courage” to sell out.
These are the “role models” we’ve been served for so long, and the “fans” of the parties simply accept them with comments like: “Thank goodness you realized it and turned around!” But what can you say to a young graduate without connections, who isn’t willing to sell out? Or to a woman who works day and night to raise her children honestly? Being honest in such a dirty reality is madness. The pressing question is: Is it better to be a madman with a clear conscience, or “reasonable” within a rotten system?
Arizaj është gazetar me një eksperiencë të gjatë në median shqiptare.
Ai ka drejtuar një sërë gazetash të përditshme dhe së fundi i fokusuar në zhanrin e analizave.
Edmond Arizaj është diplomuar pranë Universitetit të Tiranës në degën Gazetari.