For now there is a tremendous lack of political ideas, while continuing with the old avalanche of political repetition that is creating a tired electoral environment with the exception of party “thugs” who blow the party “trumpets” with no idea what it the political and democratic space looking for.
Author: Bardhyl Zaimi
The political trajectory of Albanians in North Macedonia has always been accompanied by great promises, which have ended in torpid governance and atrophy. Despite the strenuous political, often folkloric proclamations without a concrete vision of conveying the political will of the Albanians into the state of North Macedonia, the political parties have increasingly exercised the stylistics of empty promises, producing, at all times, innumerable disappointments to the Albanian citizen.
However, beyond these frustrations, beyond unrealistic disputes and also unrealistic boasting, the politics of Albanians in North Macedonia has siphoned in content, degenerated into representation, and has undergone constant recoil in the substantial, creative and modern articulation over all the preoccupations of the electorate directed to political parties.
Following the epic opposition between DUI and DPA, which was preceded by the former opposition between PDP and DPA, in the meantime in a form of discontent has been created political dissensions within the parties that had already decentralized this opposition and other subjects coming out of these two parties.
Indeed, the strong contradictions between the two ideologically perpetually opposing entities had already decomposed into other political entities that were seeking their political identity as dissatisfaction schisms within the subjects they previously adhered to. DPA received the biggest blow from these schisms but not with the same intensity as DUI.
The last parliamentary elections had already politically structured two other political forces that had been established as parliamentary parties, the Besa Movement and the Alliance for Albanians, which also included two smaller parties. The empowerment of these two entities had already created a new political reality for Albanians determined by sharp opposition and shocks.
This was the stage when bipolar political homogeneity had already become an unstable political heterogeneity, in which each subject sought to display and extend its presence to the Albanian electorate. Even during this largely obscure political phase, political discourses produced great ideas, while North Macedonia was undergoing a difficult geopolitical process dictated by new geostrategic circumstances.
The political heterogeneity that emerged before the last parliamentary elections was accompanied by a whole new element to the political trajectory of the Albanians in North Macedonia, voting for a Macedonian party, SDSM. Following the election, this political heterogeneity will mark a new schism within the Besa Movement, which had secured five seats in the last parliamentary elections. From this schism, two entities will start functioning, the Besa Movement as heirs by law and the Alternative party. Both subjects will claim to be inheritors of the initial movement.
Political pluralism makes sense in a consolidated and creative democratic space. Political pluralism is not party egocentrism that only emphasizes political presence but at the same time implies political action to respond to the challenges and expectations of the electorate. Political pluralism is not political confusion and atrophy, but rather a dynamic display of political content that is articulated within the aspiration of demos that emerges as democratic will.
In the plannimetry of this heterogeneity that has emerged even in the run-up to these early elections, at least so far, we have no political ideas, new democratic practices, awareness of a variety of problems that the citizens face. Even the articulations that touch on identity themes as always continue to be just pre-election balloons with no definite expertise, no modern political formulations, no good debates and argumentations.
Throughout the trajectory of Albanian politics in North Macedonia, the economic vision has been lacking all along, lacking authentic economic projects that would meet the expectations of the Albanian electorate. Always dominated by empty patriotic themes, pushed into an endless race for who is the most patriotic. And all this has always been at the forefront of political talk, thus covering the real and modern political articulation of Albanian sensitivity in the institutional layout of North Macedonia.
Rhetoric was offered instead of projects and fragmentary bragging rights and also instead of a comprehensive vision. In fact, the legitimacy of political pluralism as a competition of ideas, approaches, and practices has become a heterogeneity of political cliché that has produced electoral frustration and political atrophy from one election cycle to another.
It seems that within this vicious circle of political fragmentation is also laid a “battle” for these parliamentary elections. For now, there is a tremendous lack of political ideas, while continuing with the old avalanche of political repetition that is creating a tired electoral environment with the exception of party “thugs” who blow the party “trumpets” with no idea what is the political and democratic space seeking.
The legitimacy and causality of political functioning in no way imply somnambule ideological justifications nor demonizations that come in the form of deceptions and mystifications outside the orbit of politics. Political being means the competition of political ideas in the democratic space.
Can the Albanian political parties overcome themselves in these elections, instead of offering quarrels and insults to the Albanian electorate to provide political vision and concrete projects of interest to the citizens?