The Power Holders – 35 Years of Usurpation, 35 Years of Deception, 35 Years of Holding Albania Hostage Written by Flamur Buçpapaj

The Power Holders – 35 Years of Usurpation, 35 Years of Deception, 35 Years of Holding Albania Hostage
Written by Flamur Buçpapaj

Albania is not facing an ordinary political crisis. It is facing a historic crisis of legitimacy, caused by the fact that for 35 consecutive years power has been held by the same political caste, a caste that has refused to step aside, refused accountability, and refused to allow Albanian society to breathe freely. This is not a prolonged transition; it is a systematic usurpation of the state.
There was never a real break with the past. There was only a change of masks. The communist elite was never overthrown; it was recycled. Families of the former Political Bureau, structures of the former State Security, and old power networks transformed themselves into oligarchies, political parties, and economic clans. They did not build democracy; they privatized the state.
The consequences are devastating. The economy has been captured by a handful of clientelist families. Education has been emptied of quality and filled with politically imposed mediocrity. Culture has been humiliated and turned into propaganda. The army has been stripped of strategic dignity. Justice has been violated—reformed on paper and captured in practice. Meanwhile, European integration has become the greatest public lie of the last three decades.
Albania should have been a member of the European Union as early as the year 2000. This is not nostalgia; it is political fact. Albania missed the European train not because its people were unprepared, but because its power holders feared Europe’s rule of law, fair competition, and institutional oversight. Europe would have destroyed their political business model.
Let us be clear: Albania is not outside the EU because of its citizens, but because of the political crime of its ruling elite.
History is merciless toward powers that refuse to reform. It teaches us that no regime survives by relying solely on police, the military, propaganda, and fear. None. Not in the East, not in the West. Not yesterday, not today.
Albanians know this better than anyone. In 1990, a regime that appeared unbreakable collapsed within months. I myself was at the forefront of the student movement. I was arrested, beaten, and sentenced. Yet the power that used prisons and violence lost everything, because it had lost its moral right to govern. This is a law of history, and it has no exceptions.
Today we are witnessing the same arrogance, dressed in modern suits, supported by captured media, and wrapped in technocratic language. Power behaves as if it were eternal, as if the state belonged to it, as if citizens were mere decoration. This is the most dangerous moment for any society.
A significant share of responsibility also lies with American and European silence. For the sake of a false stability, state capture was tolerated, electoral distortions were ignored, and political corruption was normalized. Stabilocracy became doctrine. But stability without democracy is nothing more than a delayed explosion.
The fact that Albania has had the same party in power for 13 years is not a sign of democratic strength; it is a symptom of systemic decay. Prolonged power has not produced reform, but fear, poverty, mass emigration, and the extinction of hope. This is soft authoritarianism with hard consequences.
Democracy is not killed by tanks. It is killed when power never changes hands. That is why constitutional reform is not an academic debate, but a matter of democratic survival. A prime minister and a president cannot remain in power indefinitely. Two terms must be the absolute maximum. Anything beyond that is a slide toward personal rule.
This is how democracy functions in the United States. This is how it works in serious countries. Power is limited, controlled, and punished when it abuses authority. Only in this way can corruption be fought. Only in this way can real political rotation exist.
If the system is incapable of self-correction, then the solution must be political and urgent: a transitional phase, a national agreement leading to new, free elections, internationally monitored. Any other path is merely the postponement of crisis.
But let us not deceive ourselves. If power continues to block every political exit, if arrogance replaces dialogue and fear replaces law, then the crisis will come from the streets, not from negotiating tables. Albanian history has a name for this: 1997.
This is not a call for violence.
It is a political warning.
Powers that do not leave through the ballot box leave through shock. And shocks spare no one.
History does not ask whether you are ready.
It arrives—and it judges.