Francois Mato*

Albania is going through a historical period where the silence of the citizens has begun to become heavier than the noise of the politics of the day, because it is a clear expression of the lack of hope and alternative. It continues to be marked as a period where thousands of Albanians continue to set off every day towards customs points and airports with a backpack on their backs, with the hope of a new life, for a greater opportunity, for an alternative that their country does not provide. These are scenes that have been repeated for years, people who leave without looking back, tired of a ruling elite that does not listen to them, of a system that does not represent them, of a government that does not count on them, except for votes.

At the airport, on the buses that travel every day to Europe, in the long immigration lines, many of them repeat the same sentence: “What is happening to us?”. I think that all this mass exodus is not simply due to the economic crisis; first of all, I think it is a deep crisis of trust. Trust in justice, in institutions, in the state, in representation. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, what most exhausts a person is not pain, but the lack of understanding of it, when the other is not sensitive to your pain. When a people loses faith in political representation, it is no longer simply fatigue with political morality; it is social paralysis. Democracy does not work if the voting process turns into just a ritual and not into the expected result of the vote. And Albanians know what democracy is like, they know what democracy means, despite the fact that they do not yet have the power of the vote in their hands. They understand it every time they see that the “semi-open” lists are in fact hermetically sealed; every time they see that the deputies do not change a single line of their ranking despite the citizens' vote; every time they see that the diaspora, a third of the nation, remains politically invisible, a large body of citizens who vote without being represented and who are mentioned only in campaign speeches.

One of the problems of this system is the lack of representation of the diaspora. The diaspora is an extraordinary asset for our country, it is also an asset for the countries where Albanian exiles have integrated, so it must definitely have its voice in the Albanian legislature. The diaspora are the sons and daughters of Albania who emigrated by land and sea through countless risks to financially help the Albanian family, and thus the recovery of Albania. This is a double damage: moral (it has damaged trust) and democratic (it has damaged the system).

In more detail: moral, because it excludes from political life a good and very active part of the people – Albanians who work, study and live abroad. Democratic, because it creates a truncated parliament, with a deformed representation where a considerable part of the will of the people is missing. In the last elections, an ugly farce was played with the diaspora, which should not be repeated in the next elections. Another electoral practice that is not at all serious is that in Albania voting is done according to districts without a demographic logic, where the vote of a citizen in Tirana does not have the same weight as the vote of a citizen in Kukës or Gjirokastër (it has much more weight). Meanwhile, the party lists, although they are called “open”, are opened so little that the entire system seems to have been decided before it goes to the voter.

Meanwhile, in the same Balkans where we live, and where we have a more or less similar transition history at the start, Croatia has managed to build a fair and functional proportional system. Not because it is a richer or more politically prosperous country, but because it has made bold decisions. Croatia has ten equal electoral units, where each elects the same number of deputies, ensuring equal weight of the vote everywhere in the territory. This principle, which Aristotle called “equality of the weight of citizenship”, has not yet been achieved by Albania. Even more important is that Croatia has a special electoral unit for the diaspora - Unit XI, which also elects its own deputies and gives Croatian politicians direct responsibility for citizens abroad, and responsibility for compatriots living and working in the mother country. This is the part that Albania has rejected for thirty years, treating the diaspora not as an institutional part of the Albanian legislative body, but only as decoration for electoral campaigns.

Another stain is the preferential vote legislated in the Albanian Electoral Code. In Croatia, if a candidate receives 10% of his party's votes, he is automatically placed on the list, thus respecting the will of the voters. This forces every candidate to go to the people, to work with them, to listen to them, to be accountable to them. It forces him to be a leader of the community, not of the party's corridors. While in Albania, the preferential vote is symbolic, a count that changes nothing. The MP knows that his mandate does not depend on the citizens - therefore he never returns to his voters. And the citizens know that the MP does not depend on them - therefore they no longer expect anything from him, which is why the vast majority lines up in the gray electorate. They abandon the votes. This is how representation dies.

Croatia, a country with a well-thought-out and equal legislative structure, has created not only a more functional parliament, but also a healthier connection between citizens and politics. It has understood something simple that Tocqueville clearly expressed: “Democracy stands or falls by representation; when representation breaks down, democracy breaks down too.” Croatia has been able to avoid this danger; Albania is still experiencing it in the most painful way. If Albania were to adapt the most useful elements of the Croatian model; the reorganization of electoral units for an equal weight of the vote, the creation of an electoral zone for the diaspora, the strengthening of preferential voting with an automatic effect on the ranking, the Albanian political system would change fundamentally, and trust in institutions and politics would change as well. We would have a more autonomous, more pluralistic, more accountable parliament. MPs would be forced to address the people and represent them more responsibly, they would not be left as "puppets" with cardboard in their hands, following the approval or disapproval of the mayors out of the corner of their eyes. The diaspora would have a political voice and political responsibility.

The weight of the vote would be the same throughout the country. The feeling of injustice and predetermination of candidates who will enter parliament from the list, without even going to the voter, would disappear. In today's Albanian political situation and with the political culture that was created in our country after the fall of the communist regime, all this seems nothing more than utopia. But in fact, it is not utopia at all. It is not impossible at all. It is simply what countries and peoples with modest structures and political mentality similar to ours have done before. The problem is not the lack of models, it is the lack of will. Politicians are often afraid of fair systems, because fair systems make them accountable. But without this change, Albania risks remaining in a state that Jean Jacques Rousseau described with a piercing irony: "The English people think they are free, but they are free only on election day." In our case, the risk is even greater: not being free even on election day, because the vote does not produce representation. In the end, any electoral reform is more than a technicality; it is a moral act. The question is who does the state serve: the legislators with their hands or the citizens?

If Albania wants to stop the mass exodus, to represent the diaspora, which is a demographic force of Albanian citizens with an indisputable socio-economic role in Albania, to revive democratic trust, it must start right here: with the vote, with representation, with political equality. The electoral system needs to be reformed in several directions; my emphasis is on taking into account the Croatian system, for the representation of the diaspora and for the equal value of the vote. As Vaclav Havel said, “hope is not the conviction that everything will go well, but the conviction that something has meaning, no matter how it goes”. Albania needs to restore the meaning of the vote. It needs to restore the meaning of democracy. It needs to restore the meaning of representing all its citizens, no matter where they live, or what political ideas they represent, which brings hope to everyone. Because, ultimately, only when citizens begin to feel represented can we talk about the return of hope for Albania.

*Member of the Brain Gain Department, PD