It's a simple Albanian expression, born of both nervousness and helplessness. When someone has pushed you to the limits of your patience. It describes better than any statistic a harsh reality: a government that is taking the brains out of its own country.
The EBRD report, presented a few days ago, concludes that during the years 2023–2024, over 23% of Albanians with higher education left Albania, while only 2–3% returned. According to this report, Albania ranks worst in the region for brain drain and also for its return.
Brain drain is not simply a consequence of low wages or a lack of jobs. It happens when there is no perspective. And perspective disappears when a society realizes that change has become impossible through voting.
Whoever will understand, it is clear that as long as the state is used as an instrument of a party; as long as corruption serves as a mechanism of power; as long as the economic model relies on the circulation of informal and criminal money; when gangs and criminal groups turn into government headquarters, elections can be neither free nor fair.
Without real elections, there is no political rotation.
Without rotation, power remains closed and unpunished.
In these conditions, people feel powerless. And their sovereignty no longer counts. They surrender, they leave.
In other countries in the region, professionals leave, but also return, because they believe that the system can change and that their vote counts. In Albania, the departure is almost final. And this makes the situation dramatic. The gap between those who leave and those who return is among the deepest in the entire EBRD area.
An educated young person understands that work and ability are not enough; because careers depend on connections, not on merit; that even the exercise of free will does not change anything. Then the question is no longer “Is it worth staying?”, but “Why stay?”.
Brain drain, although the last resort of society after other efforts have failed, is a rational reaction to a closed system. Although it may seem like salvation to some, it cannot be the collective solution.
This driving reality today is not luck, nor a draw, nor is it "just how it happened to us." It is the result of governance, but also the result of silence. The brain drain is a failure of power, but also an alarm for society. An alarm for an Albania that is fading away.
And like a body in agony towards extinction, the need for electroshock therapy arises.
Which may be painful, but necessary to shake up a society that has given up on reaction, leaving room for rule, injustice, and all the consequences that this brings.
Albania must have a future again. This comes when each of us takes responsibility for not handing over our brains, votes and hopes to a system that ignores them. This comes when each of us reacts strongly and with great determination. When each of us breaks the comfort of the day and does not exchange it for the future that is slipping away before our eyes every day.
