In the interview on Çim Peka Live', former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj talks about the protest that has exceeded 100 days. He calls it the most beautiful thing in these 30 or so years. That the protest is fighting the cancerous alpha cell, if it manages to swallow the protest, Albania will die, cancer will win.

Part of the interview

Çim Peka: We are in the third and final part of the show. At the beginning I wanted to ask you about the protest. Do you see it as an outsider, are you involved or do you really expect something from it?

Arben Ahmetaj: I am not an outsider at all and I am totally involved, despite the fact that I am physically unable to. I am emotionally involved, I am involved with all my soul. I am a student of December '90-'91, with my very modest contribution with hundreds and hundreds of students or intellectuals. I am a student of the hunger strike and to confess within myself, with three or four things that I could be proud of, this was one of the elements.

Çim Peka: Do you have contact, do you have communication with elements of the protest?

Arben Ahmetaj: What value does it have, really...

Çim Peka: So where are you involved? Emotionally involved, do you expect something from her?

Arben Ahmetaj: Of course, I have contact with a family member of mine who goes there every day. I have contact with the protest because I talk to him, with my family member who goes to the protest every day, who has written and says: "I have found my soul and heart," he says when he goes there. But it has nothing to do with me. It has to do with Albania.

The protest, which has been going on for three months, almost 100 days on the streets of Tirana, I can say it, is the most beautiful thing that has happened to the soul of Albania and Albania in thirty-something years. We can certainly count the lifting of visas, we can count NATO, we can count other successes as much as you want, but this is the greatest success of a society that was in danger of losing its soul and social conscience.

Those men and women, girls and boys, whom he stigmatizes, ridicules, calls crows, call them whatever you want, are the spectacular pulse of the conscience of Albania and the Albanian nation. Because there are those from the diaspora, who are part of the pure aorta that wages war against the cancerous alpha cell.

Protest, I have never lost hope, and we have talked, I said Albanians will take their fate into their own hands. What has happened to Albanians with this head of the organization is a great disaster that has not happened even with Esat Pasha Toptan, if you like. He is selling Albania, friends, whatever comes his way, to last a day in the chair. A day in the chair.

And the justice segments help him do what he has done. To this day, if there was justice, there would be no protests. If there were SPAK, these mothers, as they naively refer to sometimes, sometimes even you. The opposition… forgive me for addressing you, I'm talking about the opposition.

Oh, long live Belindi, Gaz, or even Sali, who has been unfairly blamed on me all my life, for waging those battles. Because beyond that, there are members of the opposition who have even held poetic evenings with the head of the organization. And we speak with chosen and gentle words now when we speak.

The protest has taught all of Albania and it has taught the opposition a lesson. And I'm telling you, if this one manages to swallow the protest, there is no Albania. The protest was drowned, dear citizens, Albania died, cancer won.