Octopus ink

2026-06-24 14:43:00, Opinione Sonila Meço

Octopus ink

Edi Rama is not trying to win against the protest, but against time.

Every day spent talking about anything other than the five demands of the protest is a day won for him. Every side debate, every diversion, every provocation, every new controversy, has only one function, to divert attention from the most dangerous issue for him: Will the institutions function or will we continue to live in a one-man republic?

This is why he doesn't talk about the five demands formulated by the protesters. He doesn't mention them, nor does he oppose them, nor does he accept them, nor does he debate them. He behaves around them like a ship frightened around a naval mine.

He fears their power, he avoids them like the devil avoids incense because if he enters the demands, he leaves the territory where he has been reaping and reaping for 13 years, the controlled narrative. By talking about demands, he enters the terrain where his defenses can collapse and gives power to institutions for the first time.

Those institutions that he devalued, destroyed, took under his control and turned into facades of the system he completely controlled. There the republic, the state, the constitution ended.

And for the first time, he is being asked not to play chess with himself and not in the gambit that the genie wants.

The protest is not asking for dialogue, negotiation, or moral conviction. It is wisely dictating political costs, international costs, and finally institutional costs. The protest is not begging Rama, but presenting conditions to the system.

This is where his statement to the "Financial Times" becomes interesting, in fact, in a perverse move he has checkmated the master of diversion. Rama said that it is not up to him to prove whether or not he is the "Godfather". Then who does it belong to?

This is elementary, it belongs to those institutions that were built, financed and advertised for years by Brussels and Washington as the guarantee that no one would be above the law. This is proof of the rule of law.

With a truly foul-mouthed, but honest response in the "Financial Times", the prime minister also made SPAK's job easier.

This is why the protest is achieving its goal and no longer depends on the number of people in the square. Completely beyond any of Rama's predictions, she managed to demonstrate justice without an alibi in justifying her absence from the leadership.

It is SPAK itself that is proving that corruption has an organization, crime has an organization, money laundering has an organization, state capture has an organization. So how will it amnesty the man who has governed alone for thirteen years?

There is an old rule in politics that even Macron and Meloni know very well: when the cost of inaction becomes higher than the cost of action, the system moves.

SPAK has no other option but to move towards Edi Rama.

That's why the daily diversions it struggles to produce are so insignificant. One day a video, one day a status, one day an interview, one day a new enemy from the social media tower. This is a technique borrowed from the octopus, when its head is in danger, it releases ink so it can't be seen.

This protest has clear ideas. The five demands of the protest are still there. Unchanged. Unanswered.

A new hero or savior is not being sought. The protest is not just seeking a political act, but also the precedent that separates the republic from the sultanate.

For the first time, the man who governed as the author of the 13-year model will appear before the law as its subject.

For the first time in the history of this transition, the institution dares to knock on the door of power without asking permission from within.

That's why the prime minister wants the protest to be tired and exhausted, because he knows that the longer this wave of anger continues and persists, the less it will matter what Edi Rama says, and the more it will matter what SPAK does./ CNA