Yesterday Berisha slapped the students around in the square, but what would he do to them if he were prime minister?

By Kreshnik Spahiu (Berlin)

His squads beat every student who shouted the slogan “Rama to prison, Berisha to prison” (“Rama Burg, Berisha në burg”).

Yesterday even an idiot could see that the students’ main obstacle, and a serious one, is the Democratic Party.

With unprecedented determination, Sali Berisha has decided either to hijack the protest or to destroy it.

As he did on 11 December 1990, when he hijacked it from 40,000 students, as he did in 2018 in front of the Ministry of Education, when he broke it up with the youth of the FRPD (the Democratic Party’s youth forum), so he is doing now.

Nothing stops Berisha, and he will not back off until he has trivialised the protest.

The students, who unfortunately are very few in number, are caught between two fires:

On one side they have police tear gas, and on the other the gangsters of the Democratic Party, who have been ordered to hijack the protest and to beat anyone who mentions Sali’s name.

Yesterday it was officially proven that the students are on a hard road that leads to failure, quite unlike Belgrade, where the opposition gave the students room to organise.

Albania’s students, unlike Serbia’s, face several difficulties:

• They do not have broad popular support. People back them on Facebook but do not come out into the square. The cafés are full and the boulevard is empty.
• They have chosen violence as a political tool, and this has driven most of Tirana’s citizens away from the protests.
• They have neither representatives nor a leader at the protest. With nobody representing them, one cannot tell who is a student and who is not.
• Most of them are not independent students but political activists of the new parties of Arlind Qorri, Adriatik Lapaj and Agron Shehaj.
• They do not know whom to work with and whom not to.
• They understand neither who their partners are nor who the enemy is.
• They are against everyone, but also against each other.

So how can you win the war against Edi Rama when you do not know who keeps this government in power, or whom you will fight alongside to bring it down?

Yesterday the violence against the students proved that democracy in Albania is hostage to the man whom the United States and Britain have declared persona non grata, whom they still do not even allow to set foot in any embassy, and whose name is Sali Berisha.

The students must understand that elections are six months away and that on the ballot paper they still have only two logos: PD and PS.

The students must realise that the road to toppling Edi Rama runs through the sold-out opposition.

They must be clear that constitutional amendments, laws, and technical or political governments are all voted in parliament, as the Constitution requires, and there 130 deputies belong to Rama and Berisha.

If they do not remove Sali Berisha from politics, they will never topple Edi Rama, because even if he resigned he would win again against Sali Berisha and a handful of parties at war with each other, or against masked students who do not have the guts to put forward a list.

As things stand, the students have three options:

• To create their own party and run against everyone, new parties and old.
• To join the new parties and back Arlind Qorri for Mayor of Tirana, as the first battle against the Rama-Berisha duo.
• To surround the Democratic Party headquarters on Saturday until Edi Rama’s last remaining crutch is broken.

Remove Berisha to save democracy and Albania, and then change the government.