Edi Rama writes seventh public letter, no longer for Lulzim Basha

Rama, has sent this letter hours before the opening of the SPU election campaign for local elections.

Eddie Rama's full letter:

LET SIX E - No.

Fellow Democrats,

Today, the Socialist Party officially launches the June 30th election campaign. While the party you belong to as members or you have voted, as supporters or sympathies, does not participate in this election. Unfortunately, not only for you but for the country, your political leadership has embarked on the unprecedented course of fear of elections, of justice panic and of desperate threats to Albania and of any Albanian concerned for social peace, economic development, full integration of the country into the European Union.

Parliament's undoing without return, inciting violence, boycotting elections are essentially fleeing from the mission, office and the framework of values of a democratic party. I'm really sorry about that.

I'm not the one you want to see at the top of the country. You didn't vote on me, and today I don't ask you to vote, but I just hope you can read me.

When we have decided to live in a multiparty system and aim at uniting Albania with Europe, we have challenged a long and most generous story in terms of democratic tradition. We entered the completely new path of democracy after a half century of communist dictatorship and a forced way of life, where the political opponent was just an enemy to fight without mercy and to be annihilated without hesitation. Today, all day long, our political life still suffers from the inability to respect our opponent without publicly maiming him, with attacks common to all ethical boundaries, and often turn to violence as savage language as far as seed and tribe. But anyway, we overstepped a heavy phase, when political opponents were crippled with physical violence or when the protests were dangerous, because state weapons were used to shoot bullets at protesters or police response to them turned into mass stakes. Therefore, even though the unfortunate return of violent protests has recently shown that we are still politically depromitated, we have made great progress in the approach of the government and in bringing police forces to protesters. It's a bit.

Several thousand of you have participated in recent party protests and many others of you, support them, even though, based on our polls, as well as in what the independent polls made by our international friends show, most Democrats do not support either the burning of mandates or the violence exercised in protests or the boycott of elections by your leadership. However, neither did anyone ask you about these extreme and politically suicidal political decisions, nor is it my intention here to tell you what to do with your leadership, which has lost sight of the fact that he sees beyond his own nose.

None of you probably, I didn't, sʹe, had thought the day would come when your party, born a parliamentary party from the first pluralist elections, would not be more parliamentary and not enter the election. That's odd and gross degradation at the same time! But today, with a sovereign decision of leadership of that party, we are ahead of this fact and we don't, apparently, no possibility to reverse such a negative development.

The elections are a non-negotiable constitutional right of all who want to choose and an inevitable constitutional obligation of all of them want to be resolved.

Your leadership doesn't want a choice, because it fears an election defeat. And we can't violate the obligation because we want to be elected to the next election.

I've often heard the question: Can democratic elections be held without the opposition?

Democratic elections mean that all enjoy the right to be elected. But if exclusion in any form of opposition from the elections makes them anti-democratic, the self-recognition of a key party from elections does not make them undemocratic.

So I raise a different question: Can democratic elections be held only if you want the opposition?

Imagine for a moment if the holding of elections in this country depends on whether or not the opposition becomes! Easy political and media minds have recently beaten too much water in the pan, over how terrible it is to make elections without opposition, and how simple it is to postpone the election date since the opposition does!

I honestly tell you, if it were that simple, I would be the first to receive the flag of postponing elections, because I would rather not stop focusing on government affairs, without having to go around campaigning Albania. But not only because it is impossible from a constitutional point of view, but even though it is terrible from the point of view of democratic co-existence, I stand absolutely against the idea of delaying elections.

How can you decide where he was seen? This new rule of democratic co-existence depends on the desire or lack of a party's desire for their development on the date set by the Constitution. This is a date or a season job, this is a matter of sustainability and the foundation of democratic life. Imagine if the path of such folly were opened not only clearly unconstitutional, but essentially antidemocratic, what would happen in the elections after these elections, in those after them, and so forth, when, according to the whims of the next opposition (or the other party in the government why not!) the date of the elections returned from a constitutional obligation for those who want to be elected, to a political game of anyone who does not want a choice!

Some minds among the soft ones that you think are short: If you leave, then let them get together, by autumn, by local and general elections, and win them again, if you want, that's how the country's going to crash! This is a recipe from those who remove headaches by completely paralyzing the body! Imagine what a slippery road opens for our democracy tomorrow, if today you set the precedent that is enough to leave parliament, to practice violence, and to threaten local elections and overthrow them, right in the middle of the mandate of the elected government, by provoking new elections when you want them, even the prime minister you decide! I don't think it's necessary to extend to this point, because there's no normal mind that understands what kind of stock would be such a political life, where the winner cannot rule according to contract with the people and the loser is forced by violence to the people himself!

In short, any abnormal solution in the name of democratic normality today becomes boomerang that produces antidemocratic abnormality, for years tomorrow.

Two more words for no choice. It is a crime and severely punished by the Criminal Code of the Republic of Albania, anyone committing such a crime. If not only that, anyone who would suffer to touch a single link with the election process and then be convicted of electoral crimes in Albania would no longer be able to step foot for the rest of his life in the United States (he would have worried even family members of the relevant US law), nor would he be able to cross the control of the European Union's borders by becoming involved in the computerized list of people with criminal records who cannot enter Union territory.

Are all these serious consequences worth going after Beryhai? I don't think so, and I'm convinced that there will be no ordinary people to become part of such incredible folly.

On June 30th, it will be voted in the country's 61st municipalities. We will do our best to give Kukes, Shkodra, Kamza, Lezha, Devolli, Mallaxastra and so on to blue municipalities, the government that has been missing so far, whether or not you go to the polls. Wherever we win where we have registered opponents, just like where we do, we will be available to all citizens indiscriminately. The political battle with your leadership we've gained markedly and convincingly, that because of our credit as much to the inability of that leadership, separate it yourself which of both weighs more. But the real battle, the most difficult one, we have it with the wounds of cities and villages throughout Albania, especially where the smell of major urban change of the last four years is still inflated enough as a result of the local mismanagement of many democratic municipalities.

With full respect for your right to think differently from me, I salute you and wish you every good and health in your families. Edi Rama, June 1st, 2019.