The Democratic Party Must Be Saved from Within:
My Story, Today’s Crisis, and the Path to Renewal
EDITORIAL BY
FLAMUR BUÇPAPAJ
The Democratic Party stands at the most critical crossroads in its history. Not only as a political force, but as the symbol of a national dream that began with the Student Movement of December 1990. Today, that dream is wounded, abused, misused, and distorted. And I speak not as an analyst, but as someone who paid for that dream with my body, with sacrifice, prison, torture, and political exclusion.
I speak as one of the founders of the DP, as the former leader of the Student Movement of Shkodra, as the only student of December who was arrested and brutally tortured by the communist apparatus. Torture that left me one month in intensive care, between life and death. I speak because yesterday I stood in the square, and today I see that the ideal we fought for has been replaced by recycled old faces, infiltrated security agents, clientelism, and an elite that refuses to see the truth, the terrain, or the people.
I speak because the time for silence is over.
The DP we built was not the DP that took power
We opened the road to freedom, but power corridors were filled with people who had no connection to the sacrifice of December. Instead of the students who were imprisoned under dictatorship, they installed collaborators of the secret police. Those who surveilled Azem Hajdari, those who followed me with “30 shadows” a day; former secret police agents who became MPs, forum leaders, ministers, and deputy chairmen. And this was not a coincidence, but a strategy: an infiltration that poisoned everything it touched.
I saw this rot up close. I worked with people who had surveilled democrats and me everywhere. Bashkim Gazidede, a former communist lecturer, led an institution that caused immense damage to a party meant to fight communism. This absurdity was no accident: he rose to power on the backs of people who had resisted the structures of dictatorship. They put 30 watchers behind me and Azem Hajdari to catch us in a single mistake, while former security agents collected salaries for two years. Meanwhile, I was marked with a “serious disciplinary violation” simply because I dared to run independently under another right-wing party, the Christian Democratic Party of Zef Bushati—where I received 6,500 clean, civic votes.
The DP did not protect its own people, its contributions, or its sacrifices. And that old mistake has become today’s burden.
Today the DP has lost its moral authority, political ground, and the trust of the people
The party that once led the path to freedom has become a party fighting against itself. It has lost its generals—those who gave it life and breath. It has lost its intellectuals who once inspired public opinion. It has lost the youth, because it never opened its doors to them. And it has lost the trust of the people because it has failed to restore political morality.
Today the DP is an aging, closed, stiff, and frozen party, waiting to win elections with the same faces that have already lost three electoral battles in a row. Can the DP rise again with the same elite that led it to defeat? Political history is clear: no. No party in the world rises by keeping the same people, the same mistakes, the same mentality that kept it out of power for 12 years.
In 2013, I warned that with this team the DP would lose every battle. And so it did. Today, the weight of defeat is a wall no one can climb.
This party cannot be saved with nostalgia, but with radical reform
The DP needs not just change, but complete transformation. A reconstruction from the foundations. The reform I propose—and the reform that most true democrats ask for—rests on several clear pillars:
1. Reform of the elites
No more recycling of old faces. There must be generational turnover, real openness to youth, to professionals, to people with clean reputations and real history.
2. Returning the party to the field
The DP is no longer connected to its base. It must return to the streets, neighborhoods, villages, schools, workplaces—where life actually moves, not only to television studios.
3. Opening the party to the persecuted and the students of December
It is shameful that those who were imprisoned for democracy were excluded from the DP by orders of recycled secret police networks. They must be restored to the center of decision-making. They are the moral bloodstream of this party.
4. Horizontal and vertical restructuring
A full reorganization is needed, branch by branch, section by section. A new structure, not an old facade.
5. A new political leadership
The next leader cannot be a continuation of the past. He must be the product of the field, competition, and merit. A unifier, not a divider.
6. Alliance between the new generation and the generation that sacrificed
Neither the unrooted newcomers nor the immovable veterans can move the DP forward alone. Time and energy must unite.
Salianji and others calling for reform should not be attacked—but supported
Let me be blunt: the DP cannot afford to push away anyone who brings votes, energy, courage, and ground support. Salianji has shown he can shake the bureaucracy. Others have too. Attacking them is political suicide. The DP cannot survive with the mentality “remove whoever disrupts the old circle.” The party must open its doors, not shut them.
Those who present themselves today as “representatives of December” represent no one
Ajeti, Bislimi and others were students, but not leaders. None of the true leaders of December were invited. I was never invited by the DP, but by Minister Gonxhe. Today, people with no merit stand on podiums, people who never paid the price of democracy. This is an insult and a manipulation of history.
History must be told truthfully.
The DP is on the brink of extinction—but it can rise again, if it wakes up now
The DP has one golden chance, perhaps its last: to reform without compromise.
If it clings to the past, it will lose the future.
If it keeps the same people who lost three elections, it will lose the fourth.
If it does not open up to youth, to the grassroots, to the real leaders of December, it will remain a fading memory.
The Democratic Party must be rebuilt as a national hope, not a nostalgia club
This editorial is not a call for personal political ambition, but a call for realism. I paid the price of democracy. I have seen prison, torture, surveillance, exclusion, and slander. I have seen how secret police collaborators infiltrated our party and poisoned its roots. But I have also seen the power of the people, the power of students, the power of the ideal that changed Albania in 1990.
Today is the time to revive that ideal—or watch the DP disappear forever.
Albania needs a real opposition.
It needs the original DP, not its distorted version.
It needs courage, not recycling.
It needs vision, not nostalgia.
It needs people who sacrificed, not those who entered through the back door.
And it needs deep, immediate, irreversible reform.
If the DP understands this, there is hope.
If not, history will write it clearly: the DP vanished because it refused to reform.
