Final Act: The Last Time I Mention Them
This is my final act.
From this moment on, for me, the Democratic Party, the “Re-establishment” group, and Sali Berisha no longer exist.
They successfully completed a dark mission: the rehabilitation of the Labour Party and the erasure of democratic memory.
This is not the work of the students of December.
This is not the work of the politically persecuted.
This is the work of those who used deceit and nostalgia to once again manipulate Albanians – and to return to power using the same old methods. Does the Past Still Matter for the Albanian Right? No. It Was Wiped Away by Hand.
There is a fundamental question that haunts us:
How is it possible that a party born on the blood of the persecuted is today represented by the children of those who persecuted them?
How is it possible that the bloody history of Tropoja, Spaç, Qafë-Bar, and Kamza was erased and replaced with calculations, clans, and primitive interests?
Because the Democratic Party was no longer an ideal—it had become an instrument.
Because it wasn’t created to build the Right, but to destroy any chance of it.
It was captured from birth by the old structures of the Sigurimi (Communist Secret Police), which entered the movement with precision, with strategy, with files in their pockets.
Those who should have led the Democratic Party—families of the persecuted—were quietly excluded, because otherwise history would have to be rewritten.
Because that would mean naming real crimes, real perpetrators, and demanding a real—not declarative—lustration process.
Time for a New Right
There is no longer any point in saving what is called the Democratic Party.
It is a seized remnant, a consumed structure.
The time has come for a new Right—clean, untarnished, and breathing from the blood and effort of those who truly sacrificed for Albania.
A Right that doesn’t build its identity on the myth of a single name, but on the real contributions of dozens and hundreds of genuine right-wing figures—such as the persecuted and the idealistic students of December.
A force that is not afraid of history, but boldly states who was who.
Who spied, who tortured, who deceived—and who stood their ground.
Otherwise, we will continue to lose—not only elections, but the future itself.
The Betrayal of the Ideals of December ’90
How the Students, the Persecuted, and the Symbolic Families Were Excluded from the Albanian Right
I. The Myth and Reality of December 1990
December 1990 is regarded as the month that brought the fall of the communist regime in Albania and the birth of political pluralism.
But after three decades, it is time to carefully reexamine:
What happened to the ideals of December?
Who represented them—and who benefited from them?
The Real Students, Excluded from Official History
The Democratic Party, founded as a direct result of the student movement, never truly represented its real protagonists with dignity.
Forgotten names who led the movement:
Nazmi Peka – the only student imprisoned for political reasons after the protest;
Arben Lika, Bardhyl Ukcama, Afrim Krasniqi, Myftar Gjana, Osman Stafa – early activists and uncompromising idealists.
None of them were ever promoted to representative positions by the DP.
They have been systematically forgotten and silenced.
III. Flamur, Mujo, and Skënder Bucpapaj – A Symbolic Family the DP Didn’t Want
Flamur Bucpapaj
Journalist, writer, intellectual with outstanding contributions;
Candidate for Director of RTSH – but the DP deliberately voted against him and for the leftist candidate, just to exclude him.
Skënder Bucpapaj
Poet, dissident, author persecuted by the regime;
Among the most important voices in contemporary Albanian letters – yet never included in institutional life by the DP.
Instead, the DP promoted individuals who had never been persecuted, even some closely linked to the Sigurimi.
Weak Lists, Hollow Figures – How the 2013 Defeat Was Caused
The 2013 parliamentary elections marked an electoral disaster for the DP.
Part of the reasons were:
Candidate lists based on clientelism;
Exclusion of the persecuted social class;
Ignoring the December students;
Some figures on the list were rumored to have collaborated with the Sigurimi.
Examples:
In Shkodër and Tirana, former collaborators of the Sigurimi became MPs.
Figures like Luigj Eli became consuls, despite having no democratic or right-wing profile.
The Myth of Azem Hajdari and the Silence Toward the Others
In the DP’s official history, Azem Hajdari has been turned into the sole myth of the movement. But:
He was not the only leader of December;
All the others have been left in total oblivion.
Why aren’t Nazmi Peka, Arben Lika, or Bardhyl Ukcama mentioned?
Because the DP has built a centralized narrative that hides the real divisions and exclusions of that historical moment.
The Strategy of Deliberate Fragmentation
Instead of unifying the right, the Democratic Party (PD) has pursued a strategy of division:
Entering elections with five right-wing parties;
Extremely weak candidate lists — the weakest in thirty years;
Rejection of new forces within the traditional right;
Isolation of free and critical thought.
The goal: to preserve an unchanging caste, often tied to old interests.
Lessons to Be Learned
Today, Albania needs a genuine right wing, rooted deeply in pain and sacrifice. This right:
Must recognize the true contribution of the students of December;
Must rehabilitate and represent the real persecuted;
Must publicly denounce the collaborators of the former State Security;
Must speak the truth about the files, the names, and the responsibilities.
A Call to Return to the Ideals
If we want to build a political future with dignity, we must begin with historical justice. Without it, no right wing can exist. No hope can survive.
You, the fake “re-founders,”
will no longer receive a single line from me,
no attention,
no mention. The Right Must Be Written with the Truth, Not with Compromises and False Myths
It is time for a new right-wing political force.
A force that makes no compromise with communism, with the legacy of the Sigurimi (State Security), or with the clientelism that followed the year 2005.
A force that does not forget Flamur Bucpapaj and many others like him, who never bowed down and gave this country more than they received.
Albania needs a real opposition.
An opposition with vision, with politically clean blood, with national spirit and a serious program.
Otherwise, this history will keep repeating endlessly. And with each repetition, it is not just an election that is lost—Albania is lost.
The Albanian Right Without Right-Wingers: When Myths Replaced Ideals
From electoral defeat to the moral collapse of the Democratic Party
How is it possible that Blendi Fevziu and Sali Berisha determine the names associated with the December Movement?
This happens for several interconnected historical, political, and media-related reasons:
1. Capturing the Public Narrative After the ’90s
After the fall of communism, figures who quickly rose to power succeeded in constructing an official version of history, which spread through:
Controlled new media (such as TVSH, later Klan, etc.)
Blendi Fevziu’s book “100 Days That Shook Albania”, which for years was used as the sole reference
The systematic exclusion of many important figures who were not “aligned” with Berisha’s new Democratic Party line
2. Fevziu as Translator and Then “Editor of History”
Blendi Fevziu, then a young journalist and later part of structures close to the DP, through his media and books “crystallized” a list of names approved by Berisha, declaring it the “list of December students,” while excluding:
Those who held critical views of Sali Berisha
Those who refused to serve as political tools
Those who were genuinely active but imprisoned (e.g. Nazmi Peka), or never supported (e.g. Flamur Bucpapaj, who denounced the dictatorship back in the 1980s and was never proposed for any institutional leadership)
3. The Intentional Deformation of the December List
The Democratic Party under Berisha, and later “Reestablishment”:
Did not support the true students of the movement
Used a weak, manipulated list, filled with unknown or non-contributing individuals
Brought former Sigurimi agents into Parliament, infiltrated by the old regime, while sidelining the persecuted and the idealists
4. Concrete Examples of Exclusion
Nazmi Peka – the only imprisoned student of December
Arben Lika, Bardhyl Ukcama, Afrim Krasniqi, Myftar Gjana, Osman Stafa – unknown to the public because they were left out of the official narrative
Mujo Bucpapaj – poet, journalist, diplomat, and clearly anti-communist figure, never proposed for any leadership despite his intellectual merit
Skënder Bucpapaj – poet, prose writer, and political prisoner, systematically silenced
5. The Failure and Betrayal of the Ideals of December
The Democratic Party not only distorted the list but also systematically failed to:
Represent the idealist students
Punish the collaborators of the Sigurimi
Restore faith in a just and open system
6. Consequence: The Rehabilitation of the Labor Party
Instead of creating a new right, Berisha’s DP (and later Reestablishment) revived the old structures:
Sigurimi collaborators became MPs
The persecuted were forgotten
Many figures of today’s “Renaissance” are former communists who benefited from the DP’s failure
We are no longer in 1991. Nor in 2005.
Today, after more than three decades, the Democratic Party no longer represents what it once was—or was supposed to be: the hope for a free, right-wing, Western-oriented, and honest Albania.
What was once born from the blood and pain of political prisoners, idealistic students, and families that resisted the dictatorship has become an exhausted remnant, captured by myths, interests, and above all—by silence toward the truth.
Why Does Sali Berisha Only Speak of Azem Hajdari and Remain Silent About the Others?
We’ve heard it hundreds of times. Every gathering, every rally, every commemoration—one name: Azem Hajdari.
Of course, Hajdari was a figure with a role in the December movement.
But he was neither the only one nor the main ideological figure of that movement.
His story was inflated, processed, and mythologized, used as a cover to silence dozens of others—purer, clearer in thought, more consistent in ideals, and most importantly: without any ties to the Sigurimi.
Where Are the True Students of December? Why Were They Never Mentioned?
The first students—the ones who raised their voices, who had read Popper, Hayek, and Solzhenitsyn, who didn’t just seek the fall of Enver’s statue, but of the entire system—were marginalized.
They didn’t become ministers.
They didn’t become MPs.
They weren’t even invited to TV studios.
They were replaced by uneducated militants, “ready” for any compromise.
That was the strategy: to erase the origin, to destroy the truth, and to impose a version built by one man and a tight circle.
The Bucpapaj Family – The Heaviest Silence Over a Rare Contribution
Among all injustices, one of the gravest is the systematic exclusion of the Bucpapaj family from the political and public life of the Albanian right.
This is a family that embodies the real weight of Albanian anti-communism: with pain, with imprisonment, with internment, with open and documented resistance.
Flamur Bucpapaj, Skënder Bucpapaj, Mujo Bucpapaj—are among the brightest intellectual figures of this current, always a lucid voice for Albania and the truth.
Yet they, and their entire generation, were never included in power, never mentioned, never invited.
They were never elected as MPs—neither in Tropoja, nor in Tirana.
Meanwhile, people with suspicious ties to the communist regime, with files as Sigurimi collaborators, became MPs in Shkodër, in Lezhë, in Tirana.
They were promoted as “reborn right-wingers,” when in fact they were recycled tools of the old system, serving the interests of the new clan.
To me, you no longer exist.
History will judge you, but I have closed that chapter.
But why are we doing this?
I didn’t want to write about the Democratic Party anymore. Not now, not after this defeat.
But this wound is too deep to remain silent. It hurts.
And it doesn’t hurt simply because the elections were lost.
It hurts because a hope was lost, a generation, an ideal that once flew as the flag of freedom and anti-communism. And above all, it hurts because everything was foreseen. Known.
How can a regime win that has no program, that spreads extreme poverty and systematic corruption? A regime that buys votes, monitors every individual, and uses fear and economic dependence to stay in power?
The bitter answer: because there was no alternative in front of it.
The opposition was divided and self-destructive, turning into a grotesque shadow of what it once was. The so-called “Re-establishment” of the DP was not a rebirth. It was a split. It was surrender.
In this tragic situation, one of the gravest and most shameful mistakes has been the exclusion, silence, and disregard of the very figures who truly built the Albanian right wing. These are the ones who stood against the dictatorship, who were imprisoned, tortured, who rose to lead the student and democratic movement of the 1990s. Among them, holding a special place in history, stands Flamur Bucpapaj and the Bucpapaj family – one of the symbolic families of anti-communist resistance, intellectual dignity, and unwavering patriotism.
Flamur Bucpapaj was not merely a participant in the December movement.
He was one of the genuine voices of ideological right-wing politics, a representative of the politically persecuted, an intellectual of national and international standing. A writer, international scholar, businessman, and a figure who has defended democratic Albania and national interests in every forum where he has been present.
He never sought office. He sought justice and dignity for the ideal.
But what happened? He was never valued by the leadership of the Democratic Party.
He was not included in government, nor in diplomacy, despite the fact that others – with no contributions, no history, even with dark pasts – were promoted and enriched.
Families tied to the former regime, to the Sigurimi, to the structures of the Labour Party, took power.
Meanwhile, the Bucpapajs, with a painful and glorious anti-communist history, were cast aside.
How is it possible that no one from the Bucpapaj family – neither in Tropoja nor in Tirana – ever became a Member of Parliament?
How is it possible that an intellectual of Skënder Bucpapaj’s caliber was never made a diplomat, while the sons-in-law of Jozefina and individuals tied to party cronyism held positions in Switzerland and beyond?
How can there be justice, meritocracy, or an opposition spirit when such figures are deliberately excluded in silence?
When everything revolves around the same recycled names, perpetually drunk on power?
How is it possible that Mujo Bucpapaj was never once called to run for Parliament by this so-called Democratic Party?
An international poet, scholar, a man who took bullets for the DP, a nationalist who loves Albania and his people.
How is it possible that Jamarbër Malltezi was not placed in a secure list?
A former December student, professor, and successful businessman who developed his own property – and is now a political prisoner.
Why should he not be freed, while instead, all kinds of names with no ties to the right wing were placed in his stead – only the children of those who overtook the DP, with strong ties to the Sigurimi and the Labour Party?
Today, Re-establishment is no longer a party.
It is a property.
It is a survival tool for one man and a narrow circle.
Thus, this is no longer the Democratic Party of December.
This is no longer the home of the ideal of freedom.
