Carlo Bollino is not Rama's son-in-law

2023-12-04 22:34:00, Opinione Lorenc Vangjeli

When there is one, there can be two. And when they become two, third, fourth and so on, they are just statistics. The beginning of this statistic belongs to an unequal match that has been going on for almost three decades. On the one hand, there is a character who has tried all the peaks that bring political votes, president of the republic, prime minister and party leader. His own authority has also given him the opportunity to be a court prosecutor for all his opponents and a lawyer for his friends. Hero and adored by friends, traitor and outcast by opponents. This identikit belongs to only one person named Sali Berisha.

On the other hand, she is a journalist and publisher. He has changed the names of the media he has directed, but he has not changed his profession in these three decades. Accuser and accused. European in the former post-communist Tirana, Albanian in the passport and angry in today's almost European Albania. Like the vast majority of Albanians, with more money than in the early 90s. This is an identikit that can go to most professional Albanian journalists, but unlike all of them, he is the only one who has defeated Sali Berisha in a judicial process, found guilty of defamation. The fisherman's name is Carlo Bollino.

He won his process against Berisha five years ago after a match that contained all the absurdity of the time. For Berisha, it was the first time that his own legal system that he had created especially for himself failed. Within that system, until the moment when there is always a first time, for three decades, Berisha imposed to be the truth that had to be affirmed, but not the need to prove it, the arm that struck, but not the shoulder that could take the blow back, it was the mouth that accused, judged, decided, but not the subject that could prove that it could be accused, judged and on which to make a decision.

The enmity with the Balkan Albanian, who never forgets, and the Albanian from the Apennines across the Adriatic, has taken another absurd trajectory these days. For days, Sali Berisha has launched an almost daily campaign of accusations against the publisher Bollino, as the door knocking on the door of the prime minister. It is about the way of building Report TV, an informative media, which, due to a series of coincidences, has often come before Mr. Berisha's eyes.

Starting first with the fact that its publisher is his adversary from the beginning, with a hostility that started in the early 90s and then, when the former president informally declared him Non Grata in Albania and continues unabated even now when the former prime minister believes that Bollino has a hand in his American Non Grata. Indeed, Berisha's enemies are seasonal: he considers all those who are not with him against him. In the case of the publisher Bollino, the clash between them has only one motive, and it has to do with the profession. It is almost impossible to be both a journalist and an admirer of Berisha at the same time. For another almost fatal coincidence, Report TV was built exactly on the land acquired by Mr. Berisha's son-in-law, in a legal process signed by Prime Minister Rama. And as if this was not enough, two years ago Bollino himself did a journalistic investigation on the case of the Partizani club, which already has the suspicion of a public accusation against the beneficiary and developer of this property Mr. Malltezi and on Berisha himself who signed the process .

But even though he has entered the courtyard of the towers, the attempt to draw a line between the construction of residential towers and the building of a television is terribly strained. It's like hitting a blind man with a stick, hoping that sooner or later, he'll find a hole to fit through.

Bollino is not Rama's son-in-law to take advantage of him. He has benefited from what dozens of other personalities from the world of business or interest have received, but with the difference that his business produces a public good such as information. It is much better for Berisha, even though he is illegitimate as an opponent, to curse the publisher as a businessman or as an owner.

It is worth many times more to fight him for his political beliefs and opinions. He can judge the color of the vote he casts or the people he drinks coffee with, but it is immoral to throw stones at a media house with dozens of journalists who live by the word. There would be more chances in his battle, which has a predetermined ending.

Although this seems surreal in today's Albania, the media is not an ordinary business. In fact, she is the witness of how political men have come and gone. She witnesses their strength in power and oblivion when they flee. In the final analysis, the media has won both over genetic enmities and temporary friendships with politicians.

This is how it will happen this time in this battle where Bollino looks alone and without the empathy of his colleagues, who even after three decades of Albanian life, cannot forgive him that he is not an old tyrant and that he is an Italian immigrant naturalized in Albanian in the passport, mother tongue. He must defend himself as a journalist in an unfair battle with a politician. Sooner or later the call of the profession must become stronger than the cry of interest.

When there is one, there can be two. And when they become two, third, fourth and so on, they are just statistics. Berisha lost the first defamation battle with Bollino in a terribly difficult process because it was atypical. The second could be very easy for both if Berisha seeks a rematch in court. It is much easier this way because with one path, more than two, three or four jobs that the former prime minister will have with the court are solved.