Disowned debate

PRISTINA I turned on the TV last night and waited to see the first runoff debate between Shpend Ahmeti and Arba Abrash. Not only did I wait but I waited very nervously. I waited and couldn't wait. You're a liar as a child. But it turned out that the LDK candidate would be missing. Shpend would have to speak in front of the empty chair of Arban.

There was no debate. There were no direct clashes between candidates. And in the meantime, Arban Abrashi came up on two other shows, testifying that there were no tooth problems. And he kept saying, with the new teeth, that with Shpend Ahmeti was going to be on five shows, for five days of campaigning, on five different televisions. And meanwhile, there is no line of accusing current governance in Pristina of much. This, that, that, that, the audience, the militants. While the tripway led to the preliminary rule of Isa Mustaf, he either kept it silent by avoiding it, or he mentioned it openly and openly, praising it for what he had done. A fragile and indecisive technique.

But so indecisive and fragile, I did not find his refusal to argue. I have judged that Arba Abashi does not know Pristina and her problems. But that may not be true. He recalled the repeated charges of counterCandidate as slander. In the show, in front of the empty chair, he even used an interesting word profanologist.

That word really shook me. I realized why the Arba absence. Avoid him. Simple. Very simple. He wants to continue his monologue, untamed and unopposed. In repeated repetitions, he seeks to strengthen his messages. In politics, if anything is repeated ten times it is taken for real. When repeated a hundred times, it is absolutely true. When repeated a thousand times, it's a religious message. Repeating is so important in politics as in poetry. Just as important in politics as in the religion of rituals, continuous and constant prayer.

Direct confrontation makes things clearer. The point of the debate is at this very point. And not only the essence but also the point: In Athens and Socrates, the market was debated among the people there. Especially on political issues, the debate from a distance was futile and fruitless. And that's exactly what the former minister is afraid of. I mean, he doesn't fear that he's going to get bad in the debate, because he's not so incompetent, but he doesn't want to be destroyed by monologues, and he's disreputed by accusations he says.

Shpend's government has been characterised with great transparency. As for corruption, there is no serious charge. And all that's disputed is that it could do more than what it did. Even Shpend Ahmeti admits that he could have become more.

On the other hand, Arba Abrash's setback is quite disturbing. Assemblyists who have won from the LDK ranks are the same as in the time of Isa Mustaf. Hallim Halimi, Shefki Gashi, etc. He himself, cannot speak against his boss's rule, which was not voted by Pristina citizens in 2013. So Arba Abrash has his mouth shut for 14 years of government in Pristina, for whatever was done, for everything good that was not done, for corruption and underdeveloped. He has not depersonified himself from the LDK structure in Pristina that was and remained the same. Rather, it is her personification. His non-recognition in the debate is in practice the failure of this party's structure in the capital, which naturally for a thousandth of a cause, requires to be hidden and monologued.

The debate that Arba Abrashi is denying to people is the clear symptom of a large disease already catching the two oldest parties in the country, LDK. The same recycling disease. Through new figures, they are trying to bring together the same content. And the same governing practice.

Ironically, such an escape from debates had been held four years earlier by Isa Mustafa ʹ appearing only in a debate at the end of the campaign.