By Marion Mardodaj
Yuval Noah Harari, the world-renowned Israeli writer, said two days ago in an interview with The Economist that money is essentially pieces of paper that have no intrinsic value, but are simply agreements of “trust” between people; they were invented to create trust between people so that they could exchange goods with one another, as I have actually emphasized in one of my own writings. Noah says that endless mathematical formulas and financial systems are ultimately designed simply to create “trust.”
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But I would add that history has shown that these “financial systems and endless formulas” can also serve the purpose of “hiding the devil.”
Meanwhile, yesterday in Pogradec, Edi Rama gathered the government, the political leaders of the regions, and the chairpersons of parliamentary committees for a meeting at the villa of former dictator Enver Hoxha. It is said that among the main topics discussed were the reform of the regions and the “Besa platform.” I firmly believe that the former is intended to serve the victory of the next elections, while the latter is clearly an attempt to soften the massive civic protest that has been taking place in Tirana for more than 75 days, with the unequivocal demand for Edi Rama’s resignation.
Besa and “trust,” in essence, have no conceptual differences, but the purpose, nuances, and context in which they are used can create the impression that they have different meanings.
Just as the entire financial history of humanity has continuously sought to invent increasingly complicated systems to create “trust,” with the purpose of facilitating the exchange of goods, Edi Rama has likewise invented a new system to buy back the trust of government members, political leaders of the regions, and parliamentary committee chairpersons.
Edi Rama “offered them endless amounts of money,” that is, pieces of paper that have no value in themselves, according to Noah. In return, they offer Rama pieces of their own flesh, like soulless corpses, moved to different locations across Albania according to the prime minister’s demands; they shake the upper piece of flesh with two eyes whenever he speaks, and they write laws with the fresh blood of Albanians inside and outside Albania.
The same has been done by politicians, journalists, and analysts whose faces have remained glued to television screens like ugly paintings for 36 consecutive years. The same goes for the patronazhistët: they have simply offered pieces of their own flesh and shaken the upper piece of flesh with two eyes, and in exchange have received villas, apartments, and millions of euros.
Those who offered pieces of their flesh in exchange for worthless pieces of paper were also expected to believe firmly that the transition would continue indefinitely in Albania; they must sincerely believe that Albania will always remain the most backward and corrupt country in Europe; they must continue to believe that Albanians will keep emigrating endlessly from their homeland because they cannot secure the minimum necessities of life; they must believe that Albanian universities are merely places where parents spend money earned through hard work while their children fail to receive even the most basic knowledge; that Albanians will be treated with expired medicines and will never find solutions in Albanian hospitals; they must believe that Albanians will consume expired and cancer-causing food.
Despite the fact that many of them may have been smarter and more capable of governing than the leader himself, they simply chose to offer their trust in exchange for pieces of paper and construction projects.
In fact, I firmly believe that, primarily, Sali Berisha and Edi Rama cannot scientifically be classified as leaders, because power was handed to them by the communist regime and, in order to maintain that power, they have followed agendas and manuals provided by foreign intelligence services. I think this because the speed with which they have responded to unexpected geopolitical phenomena originating from abroad has never corresponded with the technical, logistical, and intellectual capacities of their respective administrations.
A supposed leader such as Edi Rama, for example, can never truly be considered one when his closest associates are imprisoned; in such a case, he has simply deceived his own “loyalists.”
Berisha, meanwhile, never managed to distinguish the leader of a tribe from a leader who thinks about a broader community without becoming entangled with foreign intelligence services.