courteous atmosphere prevailed, and an exaggerated willingness to reach an understanding. It was as if these people had kept all their bitterness for their enemy, and to each other were uniformly smooth and sweet. Qorri wondered if this was unity against a common enemy, or the solidarity of the weak. Some treated Qorri himself with a respect that bordered on servility because he was one of the three at the head of the T.
This atmosphere could not be sustained, and the meeting was short. Those present had already announced their intention of joining together. They approved a statute that welcomed any party or association to the Forum regardless of its political programme or orientation, as long as it supported its platform for a solution to the crisis. Everybody who joined would have an equal right to speak, and to propose and sign the Forum’s declarations.
Qorri and Gjinushi undertook to draft the text of the Platform, which was to appear in the press as soon as possible.
***
‘This Forum isn’t clear to me. What do you make of it, aren’t we too much of a mixture?’ Qorri said to Gjinushi as they made their way to Kindergarten Nr. 19. Gjinushi looked at him from under his bushy eyebrows and replied, ‘It’s a discussion table of political parties working for early elections.’ They walked on a little, and he added with a chuckle, ‘So don’t take it into your head that we’ve brought you in so you can take power.’
Qorri was taken aback. His meaning was obvious. They had installed three former political prisoners as their spokesmen, but kept power for themselves. Who were ‘they?’ Clearly he was talking about himself, but who were ‘we’ at a time like this, when nobody knew how the game would end?
Qorri thought back to Gjinushi’s career under the dictatorship. In 1990, Ramiz Alia had sent him with Berisha to pacify the rebellious students, precisely because he was a trusted figure. This role became his bridgehead to a future political career. Berisha had been put at the head of the anti-communists and had taken the leadership of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile Gjinushi had waited a little and created the second opposition party, the Social Democrats, which in the first years had been in coalition with the PD. Then, as Berisha gradually cemented his power, Gjinushi found himself sidelined and had joined the opposition. However, all told, he had survived longer in power than anyone else. Qorri had wondered if people like Gjinushi were the kind who, according to Machiavelli, had stayed neither too close to nor too far from the Prince: people who lived with danger and were poised to take high office. But in fact neither Gjinushi nor Berisha belonged to this category. They had been close to the Prince but had known when to run away. They had betrayed him at the last moment and escaped being crushed by the rubble of his fall. These people should have fallen with the Prince, but in the absence of anyone ‘not too close nor too far,’ who was ‘poised to take office,’ they were the only people who could fill this role. That was the drama of Albania and they were the country’s only chance, Qorri reflected. So this ‘’we’ stood for the former communists who were accustomed to power, whom Kalakulla hated. But there was still a big difference between Berisha and Gjinushi, who was not a communist transformed into an anti-communist. He was subtler. He almost never looked back to the past, and neither deplored it nor glorified it, and he had formed a party whose name at least was left wing.
He and Gjinushi finished drafting the Platform, and with these thoughts running through his mind, Qorri was left alone. The roughly plastered walls of Kindergarten Nr. 19 suggested all kinds of images to his mind. This time his eyes rested on a shape resembling the profile of a man with a shock of hair. His cat Nusi, the only other resident to share his living space, was curled up asleep at the foot of the bed.
***
The next day Koha Jonë published the Draft Platform. It contained several of the ideas that Qorri and the fifteen other intellectuals had outlined a few days before, but this time couched in straightforward political language and issued in the name of the parties and associations taking part in the Forum for Democracy.
The most striking and at the same time most sensitive point of the Platform was the demand for a government of professionals to prepare new elections. In plain words, this meant Sali Berisha’s peaceful surrender of power was the very thing furthest from his mind.
In fact this government of professionals was an ideal concept designed to carry out an ideal and impossible task: to clear up after the collapse of the pyramids, to find ways to repay the stolen money, to restore the trust of the international community and investors, to release the State television, the police, and the SHIK from political influence; to ensure the independence of the courts, and to pave the way for free and equal parliamentary elections before the end of 1997, under impartial international supervision. It was intended to be composed of people who were not implicated in the pyramids, were untainted by corruption, and enjoyed both the trust of the people and the support of all political parties. Where could you find such paragons? They did not exist.
The requirement for international observers was sufficient to illustrate the impossibility of all the other demands, because any government that could carry out these other tasks would not need international backing. It was obvious that Berisha would not accept the Platform, because if he had been able to accept demands like this, the country would not have reached its present plight. Yet Qorri thought that an ideal document of this kind had to be written. The impossible wish to see things done properly cloaked the Forum’s desire to overthrow Berisha. That was vital for any progress. Meanwhile, nobody knew what was going to happen. Would the Forum function as a sum of its many parts, and what direction would it take?
Chapter VII
First Statements
The headquarters of the Association and the ruling PD were no more than 100 metres apart as the crow flies. Between them lay a park crammed with kiosks and cafes. The former prisoners gathered at tables by kiosks in front of their building, while PD militants usually sat at café tables in front of theirs. There were some who frequented both sets of tables, although the bridges between the two had been broken since the government had forcibly evicted the hunger strikers.
Nevertheless, on the same morning as the Forum’s meeting, the news that the Association had opened its doors to representatives of the former communist party and would put itself at the head of the Forum reached the PD office and from there went to the Presidency, the government, and the State television. Berisha only responded publicly the next day, after the Platform appeared in the newspaper. He announced with scorn that he didn’t recognize the Forum and he expressed ironic sympathy for the political parties who were reduced to seeking shelter under the umbrella of an association. It was the kind of response that expressed the contempt of the strong for the weak and disdain for a civil society that was only now taking root in the country As if to reinforce Berisha’s rejection of any kind of agreement, more and more gangs of armed civilians roamed at night, intimidating journalists, opposition leaders, and any opponents of the government. A band of masked men assaulted the young socialist deputy Ndre Legisi as he left his home and beat him with knuckledusters. Abused and humiliated, punched in the head and beaten all over his body, he ended up unconscious in hospital, in a worse state that Rama.
Every day it grew clearer that for Berisha the use of force was the only way of solving the crisis. He strove to conceal this behind repeated optimistic statements to the national and Western press. ‘Everything is under control... repayment of the money has begun.’ The Albanian police have acted in a manner truly worthy of a democratic society.’ ‘Albanian democracy has made great progress.’
In an interview with Le Monde at the beginning of February, Berisha was asked about the people demonstrating against the government. He separated them into two kinds, ‘Some are fanatical ex-communists, and others are people who made mistakes in investing their money and do not have the courage to shoulder the responsibility themselves...’ He even asserted
