On political parties in Albania

Talks between Democrats and Socialists in Albania to resume?

It quickly became evident that after the downfall of communism in Albania in 1990, the two new major political parties - Democratic and Socialist - would have problems working together to form a government serving the best interests of its citizens. Each party - Democratic or Socialist - worked very hard to make it clear that it had the only agenda to produce an effective government. No matter which party came into power, it was invariably attacked - and often heatedly - by an intransigent opposition party eager to thwart or otherwise disrupt any agenda of the ruling government by obstruction, personal attacks, and even boycott.

Regrettably, after 20 years of democracy in Albania, its political leaders have never learned, or wanted to learn, the art of give-and-take so prevalent in other democracies, that is, compromise, negotiation, persuasion, reasoned debate, pleading, or whatever else was needed to produce a productive dialogue that would create and advance a bi-partisan political agenda on behalf of Albanian citizenry.

It was - and, unfortunately, continues to be - the bitter, personal animosity and antagonism always in great evidence between the two leaders of each party that filters down through its membership as each leader demonizes the other - Nano vs. Berisha / Berisha vs. Nano, and, currently, Berisha vs. Rama.

So read below, BIRN's latest take on Albania's President Bamir Topi's most recent attempt to get the two political rivals simply talking - never mind, working - with each other...

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OSCE, US Back Albanian President Bamir Topi in Crisis Talks
Tirana | 11 February 2010 |

The OSCE and US have voiced their support for Albanian President Bamir Topi in his role as mediator in the talks between the opposition and government, which aim to solve the country's ongoing political crisis.

In a meeting with the president on Wednesday the OSCE head in Tirana, Robert Bosch, said that his organisation “would be ready to provide assistance to restart the parliamentary political life in Albania.”

Topi announced in a statement on Tuesday that he had called for talks to be held between Prime Minister Sali Berisha and opposition leader Edi Rama.

“The United States fully supports the efforts of President Topi and the Council of Europe to mediate the ongoing political impasse and we commend Topi’s leadership in overseeing the discussions between government and opposition,” the US embassy in Tirana said in a statement on Monday.

“We believe this process offers an important opportunity to resolve without further delay the current political stalemate and we call on all parties to avail themselves of this opportunity,” the statement added.

The messages of support aim to strengthen Topi’s position before the talks, which are being held to solve the political gridlock that has gripped the country since the end of the June parliamentary elections.

However, the two archrivals have continued to exchange jibes, accusing one another of being unwilling to compromise while holding firm in their entrenched positions on how to deal with the investigation of the June 28 parliamentary elections.

Led by Rama, the Socialist opposition has boycotted parliament since the new session began in September, claiming that the government’s alleged fraud was to blame for their electoral loss.

The Socialists have conditioned their return to parliament on a recount of the electoral ballots of the parliamentary poll.

Although declaring his openness to a parliamentary investigation of the election, Berisha has stubbornly rejected the possibility of a recount. He argues that the opposition has exhausted all legal options and that he cannot override the judicial process.

The boycott has poisoned the political climate in the country and brought to a halt the functioning of the assembly, which requires more than a simple majority to pass EU accession related reforms.



OSCE, US Back Albanian President in Crisis Talks
Tirana | 11 February 2010 |


Bamir TopiThe OSCE and US have voiced their support for Albanian President Bamir Topi in his role as mediator in the talks between the opposition and government, which aim to solve the country's ongoing political crisis.

In a meeting with the president on Wednesday the OSCE head in Tirana, Robert Bosch, said that his organisation “would be ready to provide assistance to restart the parliamentary political life in Albania.”

Topi announced in a statement on Tuesday that he had called for talks to be held between Prime Minister Sali Berisha and opposition leader Edi Rama.

“The United States fully supports the efforts of President Topi and the Council of Europe to mediate the ongoing political impasse and we commend Topi’s leadership in overseeing the discussions between government and opposition,” the US embassy in Tirana said in a statement on Monday.

“We believe this process offers an important opportunity to resolve without further delay the current political stalemate and we call on all parties to avail themselves of this opportunity,” the statement added.

The messages of support aim to strengthen Topi’s position before the talks, which are being held to solve the political gridlock that has gripped the country since the end of the June parliamentary elections.

However, the two archrivals have continued to exchange jibes, accusing one another of being unwilling to compromise while holding firm in their entrenched positions on how to deal with the investigation of the June 28 parliamentary elections.

Led by Rama, the Socialist opposition has boycotted parliament since the new session began in September, claiming that the government’s alleged fraud was to blame for their electoral loss.

The Socialists have conditioned their return to parliament on a recount of the electoral ballots of the parliamentary poll.

Although declaring his openness to a parliamentary investigation of the election, Berisha has stubbornly rejected the possibility of a recount. He argues that the opposition has exhausted all legal options and that he cannot override the judicial process.

The boycott has poisoned the political climate in the country and brought to a halt the functioning of the assembly, which requires more than a simple majority to pass EU accession related reforms.

Kokkalis Program on Kosova at Harvard

The Kokkalis Program would like to invite you to the following event:

Kosovo Two Years After Independence: Accomplishments and Challenges

MONDAY, MARCH 1
4:15 p.m.

Alex N. Grigor'ev, executive director, Project on Ethnic Relations
Shpetim Gashi, senior program officer, Project on Ethnic Relations
Fainsod Room (L324), Littauer Building, Harvard Kennedy School


For more information, please visit http://www.hks.harvard.edu/kokkalis

On Communism in Albania

I was honored by being asked by Harvard Club Member Roxana von Kraus to speak on the subject of "Communism in Albania" at a presentation of the award-winning Vaclav Havel Documentary Film at The Downtown Harvard Club in Boston on February 18, 2010. I have posted my talk below. Since, as I have stated in my opening remarks, I am not an authority on that subject, I invite viewers to the Frosina Blog to post their own Comments or first-hand experiences of life under that repressive communist dictatorship in Albania.


***

On Communism in Albania
Van Christo

At the outset, let me state that I am not an authority on the subject "Communism in Albania" but I can share with you some of my firsthand impressions of life under a communist government in that country.

After some 33 consecutive years of applying for a visa to visit Albania, the land of my birth, I was finally successful in 1981 so, accompanied by my wife, Jane, and our then 4-year old son, Zachary, as part of a closely supervised tour group of Albanian-Americans, we traveled throughout Albania - from Shkodra in the North to Saranda in the South. And here are some of my perceptions:

After we arrived in Tirana, I was immediately struck by the grimness of seemingly unfinished, yet inhabited buildings where we saw block after block of apartments that appeared to be of poor construction. And, after visiting the apartments of several relatives, we were astonished to learn that water and electricity in the apartments were available only a few hours each day, so in their kitchens and bathrooms, we saw bottles and jugs full to the brim with water. In many cases people had to rise as early as 3am to get as much water as they could before the supply was shut off, generally before 4am.

The electricity was sporadic and during the winter, families frequently went to bed shortly after sunset as there was no heat, and no light with which to cook, eat or read.

There were few shops, and many of them had very little to buy. For example, if a shipment of shoes came into a shop, people converged in a frenzy to buy whatever they could lay there hands on.

Also difficult to watch were the long lines of people, assembling as early as 5am, waiting to purchase milk on a first-come-first-served basis only to see the disappointment on their faces when the milk supply ran out. Indeed, my wife and I along with other members of our tour group quickly noted how difficult life was in communist Albania.

After the communist government of Enver Hoxha was established in Albania in 1945 at the end of WWII, diplomatic relations between Albania and America soon broke off, and ties between the Albanian communities in the USA and Albania ended. Travel between the two countries was prohibited, at first, by the communist government, and later by the USA. Private telephones in Albania were forbidden (as was the ownership of automobiles) and the only communication that existed between Albania and America was the exchange of heavily-censored mail. And, then, letters from America were delivered first to Yugoslavia and then-rerouted by the Yogoslavs to Albania.

In 1957, small Albanian-American tour groups, closely supervised, were finally permitted to visit Albania. They were happy to visit their motherland after almost 30-40 years of separation. And what did they see?

Instead of dirt roads, outhouses, and other primitive living conditions in Albania (because of its almost 500-year subjugation under the Ottoman Empire), they saw, instead, tall, multi-storied apartment buildings with indoor plumbing, asphalted roads where none had existed before, schools, a university, hospitals, clinics, libraries, and then, a few years later, even a "skyscraper" hotel in the center of Tirana, and other eye-openers that were to the American-Albanian visitors unbelievable achievements. When the tour groups returned to America, they related with some enthusiasm to the Albanian communities the positive changes that had occurred in Albania. To them, the before-and-after contrasts were dramatic. Quite naturally, a few of those American-Albanian enthusiasts were immediately - and unfairly - labeled communist sympathizers to be scorned for touting the wonders of a brutal communist dictatorship

Now, I want to contrast the life experiences of those first Albanian immigrants who came in numbers to America in the 1920s with the more recent arrivals. As I was growing up, I was always intrigued that when Albanians met each other on the streets of Boston, they invariably ended their conversations with the nostalgic expression "Mot, ne Shqiperi - next year, in Albania."

Yet, when after 45 years of an absolute dictatorship, Albanians from Albania began coming to America in 1990 after the downfall of communism, of the thousands that I have spoken to, their comment was almost always "We escaped from Hell.”

In our family, my nephew’s grandmother and grandfather were imprisoned for being dissidents. His grandfather was tortured, died in prison, and buried in some unmarked grave, and, Nona, his grandmother, was let out of prison after two years because she held an Italian passport. Jane and I were pleased to be able to help sponsor our nephew’s family including Nona to come to the United States in 1997. It was gratifying to see Nona spend her final years (she died in 2008) in a free Democratic country.

I will never forget Nona's descriptions of life in a brutal communist prison, and her life in Albania afterwards. For Nona, and many others, Albania was Hell!

***

Was Alexander the Great really of Albanian(Illyrian) origin?

A Frosina infobit

Alexander the Great / Leka e Madhe

Sir William Woodthorpe Tarn, of the British Academy, regarded worldwide as having written the definitive work on Alexander the Great, states in the opening paragraph of his book Alexander the Great that "Alexander certainly had from his father (Philip II) and probably from his mother (Olymbia) Illyrian, i.e. Albanian, blood!"*

During Rose Wilder Lane's visit to Albania in 1921 resulting in the publication in1923 of her book Peaks of Shala, she heard the following rather extraordinary rendition of Albanian oral history about Alexander the Great from an Albanian elder:

"There was at that time two capitals of the united kingdom of Macedonia. There was Pela, between Salonika and Manastir, and there was Emadhija**, the old capital, lying in the valley which is now Mati (a high, fertile plateau north of Tirana, near the coast of northern Albania - ED).

"Alexander's father, Filip the Second had great houses in both Pela and Emadhija, and before Lec i Madhe was born, his mother left Pela and came back to the original capital, Emadhija. It was there that Lec i Madhe was born, and there he lived until he was out of the cradle and rode on a horse when he first went down into Pela to see his father who came from the city to meet and see his son for the first time.

"Filip the Second was very proud of his son, and his pride led him to the one great foolishness of a good and wise king. He said that he would make Lec i Madhe king of the world, and that was well enough, but he thought to be king of the world a man must be more learned than he himself. Whereas all old men who have watched the ways of the world know that to be strong and ruthless will make a man powerful, but to be learned makes a man full of dreams and hesitations.

"In his pride and blindness, Filip the Second sent to Greece for an Albanian who had learned the ways of the Greeks, and to that man he gave the boy, to be taught books. (The Albanian's) name was Aristotle, and he came from a family of the tribe of Ajeropi, his father having gone to a village in Macedonia and became a merchant there. Being rich, he sent his son, who was fond of thought rather than of action, to learn the Greek ways of thinking. And it was this man who was brought by Filip the Second to teach his son."***

* P 1, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, W.W. Tarn, Beacon Press, Boston, 1956
** "Emadhija" means in Albanian "the great city"
*** PP 184, 186, 187, PEAKS OF SHALA, Rose Wilder Lane. Harper Brothers & Publishers, New York & London, 1923

Other nationalities , of course, have long laid claim to Alexander the Great as one of their own - most notably the Macedonians and the Greeks. However, as cited so authoritatively in the opening paragraph of Tarn's book, Alexander the Great can be rightfully identified as an Albanian.

The Corfu Incident

During the Cold War, it had been stated many times in the media and elsewhere that mines in the waters in the Corfu Straits that damaged two British destroyers killing 44 Royal Navy sailors had been laid by the communist government of Albania's Enver Hoxha. That was the common, accepted belief, so for that reason, some one and a half tons of gold bullion stolen by the Axis powers from the Albanian Central Bank during the 1939-45 war had been held by the Bank of England. After WWII ended, most of the gold bullion was returned by the UK to Albania.

What I find both intriguing - and puzzling - is that the mines actually "might have been laid by Yugoslav naval forces."

Please read on...

**

The Corfu Incident
Britain returns Albania's gold in 1.3 million (Pounds) deal

By Tim Butcher, Defense Correspondent
The Daily Telegraph, 28 October, 1998

A diplomatic impasse dating from the start of the Cold War will end today when one and a half tons of gold worth around 12 million Pounds and held for fifty years in the Bank of England is returned to the government of Albania. Britain blocked the gold's return until Albania accepted responsibility for the death of forty-four Royal Navy sailors killed in 1946 when two destroyers hit mines in the straits between Corfu and Albania.

After lengthy diplomatic negotiations since Albania's communist dictatorship ended in 1991, an agreement was reached to return the gold for payment to Britain of compensation. The bullion, stolen form the Albania Central Bank by the Axis powers during the 1939-45 war, had been held in the Bank of England since 1945.

At a private ceremony scheduled to be held today in the Foreign Office in Whitehall today, representatives of the Albania Central Bank will receive a document giving them title to the gold. The Albanians will hand over to the British government a warrant for 1.3 million Pounds compensation. Veterans of the 'Corfu Incident' criticised the exchange as the compensation was one-tenth of the 13 million Pounds awarded to Britain by the International Court of Justice in 1951.

"The sum sounds pretty paltry when you think of the loss of the two ships, of forty-four lives and fifty years of pursuing the claim," said Sir Donald Golsing, the joint chairman of the National Car Parks who was a seventeen-year old signaller on a cruiser accompanying the two damaged destroyers. "But I suppose fifty years is a long time and honour has been done if only to allow Albania to continue its slow reform towards a democratic country."

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said the principle of liability has been accepted by Albania, which has a weak economy that is developing slowly. "The government has great sympathy with the families of those who suffered in the incident but they did receive compensation from the British government shortly after the incident."

The issue of the Albanian bullion, known as King Zog's gold after the last Albanian monarch, has soured relations between Britain and Albania since the incident involving the two ships, Saumarez and Volage. Albania dismissed British claims that the mines were illegal and there was some evidence that they might have been laid by Yugoslav naval forces. But a hearing at the International Court of Justice in the Hague supported Britain's clams and awarded compensation.

The gold was part of a large cache of Nazi gold held in the Bank of England but administered by a joint commission consisting of Britain, France, and America. While the commission returned vast sums of gold to nine claiment countries such as Austria and Luxenbourg, Britain blocked the Albanian claim until the issue of damages for the Corfu incident were settled.

Kokkalis Program Executive Education

February 1, 2010

The Kennedy School’s Kokkalis Program on Southeast and East-Central Europe is pleased to announce an exciting Harvard educational opportunity in Europe!

Leading, Innovating and Negotiating: Critical Strategies for Public Sector Executives is a Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) executive education program which takes place in Athens, Greece from 31 May – 3 June 2010. We request your assistance in recruiting participants, and ask that you to share this information with senior public sector officials from SE Europe who play a key role in the strategy and functioning of their organizations, and encourage them to apply (application deadline is 26 April 2010).

The program is a unique opportunity to learn from Harvard faculty who are luminaries in their fields. It will offer instruction in the following areas:

- Negotiation and Conflict Management, taught by Dr. Brian Mandell (Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Chair of the Negotiation Project, HKS)

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For further information and application instructions, please visit the HKS Executive Education Web site. Eligible individuals are encouraged to apply as early as possible to secure a place in this program as well as limited full-tuition and lodging scholarships.

Sincerely,

The Kokkalis Program