It is not the first time that Edi Rama, sometimes sotto voce and other times openly, articulates one of his biggest dreams: the final liquidation of the Democratic Party (PD). Today as well, during the electoral congress of the Renaissance, he spoke full of rancor against the first democratic force, protagonist of the pluralism installation in Albania; the force that enabled Albania’s membership in NATO and the free movement abroad, without visas, of the Albanian citizens. Breathing hardly because of the inner hate, with an unprecedented hostile rhetoric for the political opponent, Rama can no longer hold the desire and anticipation for the final liquidation of PD, the force that represents nearly 700 thousand votes.

“All this will end on June 18^th. All this, on June 18^th, will belong to the past. The chapter of the Democratic Party as we’ve known so far will end along with this one”, Rama said two days ago in Berat.

How can one explain this rancor, this nearly-pathological hate, not merely against Sali Berisha, Lulzim Basha and the leadership of this political force, against their sins in the time when they governed the country, but against PD itself as an institution, as a national treasure, from its very founding days?

What pushes Edi Rama to become impatient to see the political force that came out of the dreams of the students of December 1990 end as liquidated, “suicide”, as he declared in the Congress?

Clearly it’s nothing to do with the 27-year old political battle between PS and PD as two normal opponents in pluralism, not even with the battle between Albanian left and right.

To explain all this, one needs to turn far back in time, to enter his turbulent subconscious as an individual and find the core where all this venom, senseless at first sight, is produced.

Everything starts in the time when the Democratic Party and simultaneously the pluralism at were conceived. When Edi Rama, coincidentally or not, was involved in the time’s developments and made efforts to become a protagonist of the new political Albania.

The fatal absence

Edi Rama will never forgive to himself his physical absence on December 8^th, 1990, the day when the new political class of Albania was shaped. Despite that, as a professor in the Institute of Arts, he was distinguished in some “dissident” activities with John Lennon’s music, he hid himself, avoiding that historical day. He was absent in the Institute of Arts and in particular the late hours in the Students’ Town, where the students’ movement had reached its climax and started the unstoppable journey that ended with the final collapse of the communist system.

It’s Edi Rama himself that tells about his absence in that historical moment. An absence that would have an important influence in his political career, till when he was catapulted, eight years later, from France, where he had escaped for a second time, but also an absence that would mark an unusual deformation in his development, conscience and character. A hate and rancor that today are openly exploding.

This is how he describes that moment in an interview for the book “The white trench coats” by journalist Luljeta Progni:

“I wasn’t there, because, after the Romanian revolution, there was a certain tolerance and within that work they started to apply giving travel passports to people who had relatives abroad. We had some relatives in Corfu, from my mother’s family, from the time of Italian-Greek war. We received our passports and I went there along with my brother, in the summer of 1990. During our stay there, we contacted the Gallery of the Municipal Theater. We agreed to organize an exhibition in the middle of December of that year and on December 8^th I departed to Corfu. I told Ardian (Klosi – Rama’s friend) that I needed to go there. I did not have the instinct that something would happen exactly during those two or three days. They were some difficult couple of days for me, because, along with others, I had hardly waited for a year for a meeting with (Albania’s last communist leader) Ramiz Alia. Any time something happened in the Institute, the representatives of the (communist) party came there, made meetings which we laughed at and the more time passed by, the more the rank of those who came there got higher. I was convinced and I used to say it that the game and this process would be over pnly when we would sit in front of Ramiz Alia. I told my friends that someday, very soon, we would meet Ramiz Alia, because they cannot stand what we are doing. And just when our moment came, I was not there”.

Attempts to capture PD

From what he says, it is clear Rama has resented the gaffe of his life, escaping to Greece for some “exhibition”, while the students and Tirana’s intellectuals were risking their lives in confrontation with wounded regime, which was seriously ready for a bloodbath in its wild efforts to survive.

His coward decision to go away just in the historical moment very soon would change from envy and jealousy into rancor and hate for those who stayed and put their lives in danger confronting the falling regime.

Regardless, the core of December idealist students and intellectuals forgave him. They didn’t take note his absence on December 8^th and, for what he had contributed as a “dissident” in the Institute of e Arts, elected him, on December 12^th, in the Initial Commission of the Democratic Party.

Edi Rama’s name figures in the protocol of the meeting of the Initial Commission of PD (written with hand by Ilenja Mëhilli) which is correctly written in “The white trench coats”. He was chosen in the team for the electoral issues and also in the work group for the party’s Status and program.

But, after a harsh argument with Gramoz Pashko in the very first meeting, Rama refused the task and left. Not even his friend Arben Imami succeeded to turn him back. He did not believe the party would win the first pluralist elections. Also, witnesses in the meeting said later he was asking for more. His real ambition, which stemmed from an arrogant self-esteem, was to become PD’s chairman.

This is how Rama explains this moment:

“I did not have any desire to be involved in politics, because I was interested in freedom, not politics. I sought freedom as an inner need to do the things I wanted and I did not want to deal with politics”.

Time would very soon prove exactly the opposite. He lies when he says “I did not want to deal with politics”. After the failed attempt to become PD chairman, he started his efforts to create a new party, all of his own.

Today, when he opens the dam gates to the subconscious spring, full of hate and rancor for PD, he does not mention this history. Rama, with a single sentence in the Congress, proclaimed the Democratic Party and its 27-year history as the biggest evil that ever happened to Albania. As a matter of fact, by kicking Rama out, PD “harmed” only the Socialist Party, as would be proved later.

To be continued…