By Sonila Meço/ Manual for using hope in monopoly conditions

2025-10-11 12:16:00, Opinione Sonila Meço

The decline of November 9 as the election date, regardless of the reasons (court decisions or time bought by the government through discouraging polls) is the first strong crack in the myth of the omnipotent. But the opposition's muscle must be tempered and it must be the last one to charge the campaign even when there is none. Therefore, this note goes along with this logic, in any case the new date for the partial elections in Tirana.

It's understandable that people are excited about Florin.

He comes clean, without traces of power, without the worn-out language of politics, and that is enough to be seen as hope. And that there is hope is great news.

In this competition, the comparison between Binaj and Manastirliu is fundamentally unequal.

We are faced with an official proven to have failed in vital sectors, health and education, the product of a diabolical state machine for political survival, with patronage networks, an instrumentalized administration, a public budget that finances campaigns, and a culture of absolute dependence built over years.

In this habitat, not only humans compete, but also the system that created it.

And perhaps this is the real opportunity that this race brings, not to save the city with a new face, but to test whether our society is ready to protect a clean person from a consolidated system that does not want such a person.

Flori is perhaps the most humane candidate to enter such a race in years. But precisely because he is so, he must be protected from idealization.

In consolidated, democratic systems, honesty is not heroism, but procedure. In captured systems, honesty is a risk that must be protected by law, control, and transparency.

Therefore, every new candidacy must, in addition to sincerity, be equipped with the architecture of guarantees it proposes, how it will maintain independence, how it will control decision-making, how it will ensure transparency over every contract and decision.

For this, the opposition campaign needs an exercise in institutional citizenship, where regardless of the outcome, precedent wins, honesty and accountability finally become functional.

I don't care how aggressive journalists and analysts are in their confrontations with him, even if they were gentle, tolerant, and friendly with Florin, they would deprive him of the golden opportunity to raise this debate not about himself, but about the way power works.

Only then does his candidacy become more than a competition, it becomes a moment of civic culture.

"Don't expect heroes, build institutions" is the strongest lesson a society can give to history. That no power is eternal, responsibility is.

A person, no matter how wise, just, or charismatic, has a limited life, emotions, interests, fatigue, and fear.

The institution, if it is built correctly, has no ego, no personal interests. It is the permanent form of collective reason, which regulates the power of individuals.

If a state bases its rules on people's character, it falls as soon as their character changes.

Therefore, raising the debate on the failure of institutions by the will of power is what we want to hear and for this the opposition candidate has the integrity to speak and the opponent to be judged. Therefore, in Flori we should look for the opportunity and not the hero.

Albania always wastes energy finding a savior, when it could channel those blessed energies into establishing institutions that make a savior unnecessary.

Real reform begins when power agrees to be changed by law and vote.

What is not understood cannot be overturned.

People should emerge from the opposition campaign wiser, not simply by analyzing Rama as a figure, but the architecture of his power. The gradual capture of institutions under the pretext of reform, the dismantling of every check and balance in the name of "stability", the replacement of public trust with economic dependence and survival for a living, the creation of a controlled media market and the introduction of organized crime into the system.

Understanding this structure is half the battle.

The new regimes scrupulously control both the economy and public perception. And Flori knows this well, as he also has experience in journalism and the media, so he has no illusions that when he goes to a television station close to the government he will face any direct or camouflaged form of attack against him. Or even misuse. But more important than this, or the call to analysts for tolerance towards him, would be parallel sources of information, social networks, verification platforms, door-to-door communication.

The goal is not propaganda against propaganda, but the neutralization of the monopoly on truth.

And how personal honesty can be translated into functional institutions serving citizens.

Rama will leave the moment society realizes that neither he, nor anyone else after him, can hold power unchecked.

The goal is not simply to overthrow Rama, but to disable Ramism, that is, the logic of uninterrupted rule. For this reason, Flori has the historical mission to give meaning to this enthusiasm for a new, universally accepted figure. To bring not only oxygen, but also new lungs. So that the concept of the "unanimous independent candidate" does not seem like an opposition that is afraid of itself, of debates, of differences, of the courage to come up with an idea that divides, or as a symptom of a weak opposition, that seeks more to survive the game than to change it.

If Flori is going to win, let him win as a man who challenges a system, not as a dream that feeds it. And if this race manages to restore faith in reason, in the institution, in the boundary that separates power from the individual, then perhaps for the first time in many years, Albania will have won without anyone declaring the winner./ CNA