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A people in search of opposition
2025-11-11 21:25:34 / EDITORIAL
The by-elections did not produce the usual winners of a consolidated party, which has both the stone and the nut, as the latest OSCE/ODIHR report describes the relationship of the ruling party with the state.
But the extraordinary absence of citizens was striking. Not only were there no ballots in the ballot boxes, but hope. And that is no longer a big word to use in political speeches, but a reality that can be measured in numbers: Albanians are not voting because they have no one to vote for.
In the five municipalities where the last elections were held, turnout fell to levels that, in any functioning democracy, would constitute a national alarm. This is no longer a passive boycott, but a silent revolt against a political system that moves forward by inertia, leaving the country in a quagmire of aspirations.
The abstainer is no longer an uninterested citizen. He is a disappointed citizen, who feels that every vote is worthless in the face of an all-powerful government and an opposition powerless to be the spokesperson for the change that is sought.
When citizens choose not to vote, they are not apathetic, they are protesters. And this protest is much deeper than any placard or rally.
Those who remain silent in front of the boxes today are the same ones who might speak differently tomorrow, if someone speaks to them in their own language.
Today Albania has a strong government, but not because it is good, because there is a vacuum.
And that large mass of abstainers is a people in search of opposition.
Not as a formal decoration of a government tired of scandals and crippled by justice, but as the embodiment of a broad social contract that unites and does not divide; that reasons and does not invent enemies; that denounces, but at the same time presents the alternative; that listens and does not pretend; that chooses reform, not recycling; that is the voice of reason, moderate and clear, not of the extremes that speak to the belly of social networks, closed in "echo chambers".
Any political entrepreneur, seeing this high demand, 80% of those who stayed home, would be able to formulate an offer to stay in the political market.
The recipe is engraved in the profile of the absentees; the product must be able to attract them.
If what calls itself the "opposition" will be content with just the name, that is, seeking only a label and a position in Albania's binary politics, resembling more those it "harshly" fights, when they name themselves as they wish, and not actually acting as such, that is, being a competitive, inspiring alternative and spokesperson for civic aspirations, then the abstainers will remain the majority, the opposition the minority and Rama the prime minister.
The path forward is well-defined, because nothing simplifies the choice like a lack of alternatives.
If those who claim to be the opposition continue to be who they have been, locked in the palace of talkers, they will bring shame on themselves and Albanian society.
But if they will change and reconcile their differences with society, with the political, economic and intellectual factors of the country, if they will define common rules and mechanisms for their respect, if they will work with truth and patience in building a complex, multifaceted mosaic, the premise of which is respect for the diverse nuances of the Albanian right, then the results will come.
And at the end of all these "mothers," the conditional link between aspiration and reality, remain those who have the strength to take these steps.
When they throw them in the direction of the abstentionist majority, we will understand that they want to serve the citizens.
When they throw them in the opposite direction, we will understand, once again, that they only want to serve their own chairs.
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