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Businessman Artur Shehu breaks his silence: I am a long-time land owner in Zvërnec, I don't know the investors at all

Albanian businessman Artur Shehu spoke on the Opinion show...

A traitor called by the blind or a loyalist in a collective betrayal?

2025-10-25 09:54:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

Several democratic leaders have accepted several government positions. These are the traitors, who are anathema to those who call themselves "true democrats," who accuse anyone who thinks differently of being a "traitor and a sellout" and who have turned loyalty into a marketable commodity: whoever curses the "disloyalists" the loudest is considered closer to the "cause."

But what is this? Loyalty or submission? Is submission a political virtue or a political misery?

This story of "loyal" democrats cursing "disloyal" democrats, who had betrayed the leader by accepting official positions from the socialists, has become a political grotesque that even satire can no longer save. To hear today's militants cursing those who "sold out", while themselves are tied to a leadership that knows neither mercy nor reflection, is like that story of the man who found his wife in bed with her lover and, to punish the woman, cut off his own tool.

Such is the logic of the "loyalists": in the name of revenge against the "traitors", they cut every vein that feeds democracy. Sick of a blind love for the leader, who has been extinguishing the party for years, a fire that turns to ashes.

Then they come out and lament: "The false democrats betrayed us, they destroyed our ideals!" But who destroyed them? Those who sought to survive politically, economically, or you who surrendered your mind to a man who cannot recognize defeat?

It's the same absurd logic that goes beyond irony. Democracy, which in theory should be a union of ideas and alternatives, has practically become a theater of jealousy where everyone accuses the other of betrayal, while the "leader" sits on the ruins he himself has caused, convinced that he is still the beloved leader.

In this farce, more comedy than politics, I am also reminded of the story of the man who killed his parents and in the courtroom asked for mercy because he was an orphan. This is exactly how that part of the "loyalists" behaves today; under the name of loyalty to the leader, they have killed every possibility of unity, they have torn down every bridge of cooperation and now they ask for mercy through hatred, because they feel "betrayed" and victims of betrayal.

The truth is that no one betrayed them, they betrayed reason. In politics, when there are no ideals, but interests, when loyalty to the leader is stronger than loyalty to freedom, there are no more parties, but sects. And sects do not produce democracy, they produce political cemeteries.

To blindly serve a person and not an idea, to measure loyalty by the zeal of cursing another, then the end is inevitable: you are left without reasoning, without dignity, and, worse, without democracy.

To put it bluntly, true betrayal does not happen when someone accepts a position, but when someone abandons reason. It does not happen when a democrat cooperates to build, but when a “loyalist” destroys everything in the name of a man who refuses to leave the stage and who launches militants into war against an enemy that exists only in the mind of the president.

Perhaps, what is called “political betrayal” is sometimes often the first act of political emancipation. It is the moment when someone says “enough!”, when they choose reason over orders, freedom over fear. And this, for an authoritarian leadership, is more frightening than any real opponent.

If you think about it, every "betrayal" of a leader who has betrayed ideals is a moral act.
"Betraying" an authoritarian saves democracy.
"Betraying" a cause that is no longer a cause protects reason.
"Betraying" a party that has lost its soul preserves conscience.

The political morality of betrayal, therefore, does not lie in loyalty to a man, but in loyalty to a principle (even though in the cases to which we refer the principles are questionable). And the greatest political betrayal is when, in the name of freedom, people defend their slavery.

So, when you hear the "old democrats" cursing the "traitors", you realize that it is not about political morality, but about the morality of servile people who love democracy so much that they are not letting it breathe.