Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the reception with media executives and journalists on occasion of the end-of the year holidays:

To start, I would ask you to applaud Endri Fuga for 3 reason. First, because he had a hard time looking for the speakers. One would say, I won’t talk because if I talk, Fatos Lubonja will criticise me. But I will be there. Another one would say, I’m not going to talk because I don’t know who is going to, and I’m not coming, and another one told him, I’m not going to talk because if I talk, I will say it all. In my opinion, the second reason deserves some of the applauses you gave him, because he had a hard time trying to decide who would sit next to whom. Lutfi rightly said that, as a general rule, I take care of the protocol and everything else myself, but this time, as you can see, the table places have been decided without protocol, because the number of people who didn’t want to sit next to other people was quite impressive. And thirdly, because Mr. Fuga anticipated that none of the speakers was going to be welcomed warmly and was not going to be applauded. This also occurred. So, he knows you very well.

In the meantime, I will try to say a few written words, hoping that the atmosphere of “condolences” will be somehow broken. After all, we are going together towards the end of another year, in the same place, in the same city, celebrating together the end of this year, and just like one year ago, we have gathered together for the same reason. Since I am your host, it is my duty to treat you with the same special respect, not only by through the banquet prepared with the same care in your honour, but even through this welcoming speech, written with the same desire as a year before.

The latter, the same desire, is as good as it is bad in this relationship of ours, and you know this better than I, because unfortunately the good and the evil coexist. For I cannot forget that once I was among you, not as a journalist – God forbid that I was a journalist like you – but as a writer in the print media opposing the government, and the stubborn memory of that time has made me sometimes forget that although I am still with you, things have changed since long ago.

Now, I am among you now as the guinea pig of your work, and I have to accept without saying anything the scalpel, knives, scissors, needles, borer, routers, saws, chisels, hammers, acids, and so on. Therefore, I have actually made a non-commendable choice to not read and hear you directly, but simply be happy with a full-page summary of the press office, each morning.

For the sake of truth, this doesn’t work always, because sometimes it happens, rarely, but I happen to read something special suggested to me by someone. But generally speaking it is as I said, and I believe that you feel quite comfortable with this, because the power “doesn’t speak to your hands”, as the saying goes, and your hands do whatever you want. But, to tell the truth, I also am pretty ok, because this way neither my thoroughness of former press writer is hurt nor the taste of the diligent reader of the word written with thoroughness is affected. Thus I spare me and I am sparing you every hurting scenario that cannot be anything but the crackling of the teeth of power against your freedom to treat me as a guinea pig treat me, and your right to draw any conclusions, however arbitrary, that your heart, mind or sponsors of your experiments desire, or all three together, and so on.

But tonight, I could escape neither the good nor the evil, and so I asked the press office to help me with this speech and make a summary of your 1-year work having me as a raw material of your products.

And I was really amazed. Wow! How much work, this year, to tear me to pieces and to draw from every piece final conclusions on my inexistent ideals, my childish purposes, my shallow desires, my grim intentions, my complexes, fears, needles in my eye, sounding to my ears, harassment in my nose, the secrets in the blood, stomach, lungs, even in my tail. And many analysis, diagnosis, prognosis in just one year during which, to be honest, without being aware myself, I have reigned, ruled, oppressed, robbed, burned, destroyed and had such fun with buffoons, clowns, acrobats and dancers around the great fire of hell that I feed with the bodies of the poor. And many other written incessantly for a year, to prove stubbornly how indisposed, captured, corrupt, powerless I am, how fragile and vulnerable to blackmail, in a vain attempt to buy time while my fate has been badly written.

The devotion to truth brought some of you so far away, so that you discovered that my desperation for power has transcended the boundaries of any imagination and, united with my affliction of failed artist, has created a Frankenstein that is suffocating Albania with the terror of taxes and fines, and is giving our cities the strange contours of my house in Surrel, where just one shocking would be enough to understand how risky my vision is: my house has no windows!

Frankly, I was amazed with what I read while getting ready for this speech, and it does not matter if the authors I had the opportunity to read would not believe that I was really amazed. I sincerely thank them for this war of words without borders that they have made, in a one-year effort that, believe me, would have made anyone feel privileged to tear me to pieces and draw out of every piece a poignant proof of what I am, and everybody should as soon as possible, before it is too late.

And I will continue with stoicism to be your guinea pig, waiting with great curiosity the end of next year to read the findings of the coming year. I am very curious to know what is left unsaid. Surely, many other things will come out of this very impressive research in every depths and corners of my being, and I will try to give you new reasons to do new tests, find new diagnosis, to draw new conclusions and reflect the new findings in your notebook. But even if I am not able to provide you new material, it has been already proved globally that you are so deep inside me and discover eye-closed any preconception of mine, even before they come to me, as I am convinced that you will find them yourself.

On the other hand, I apologize to all those of you who have not been messing a lot with me, for focusing in this speech on those who have been messing so much with me. I didn’t want to make a long speech like usually, the ones that bother you so much, but in fact you deal so much with them that the question about what you would do, if they were not comes quite naturally.

Honestly, it is not your fault, especially those of you who have entered so deeply within me and have seen so many things in my inner self that they do not need any longer to see, hear, know where I am, what I am doing, because they are able to guess all of these, with a precision that exceeds the reality.

However, beyond everything, yet one thing remains – I think – the most important thing to say from the height of a task that has taught me something, and which you probably have not had time to discover, or perhaps in trying to make all these discoveries, you has become impossible to discover a very simple thing; that our temporality in this world is so brief, that frankly there is no sense to live by forgetting to laugh with each other and smile at each other as much as possible.

To conclude, I want to tell you very honestly that I wish all the best to everyone, because beyond everything we do during the day, the simple truth remains that another day goes by, another month goes by, another year goes by, and many other years. Time passes very quickly, to waste it only with things that sometimes we take more seriously than necessary, and forgetting to smile at each other. I know that for someone unstructured to the point I said, it sounds a little hard to believe that I would like see everyone smiling, but you can be sure that is a very sincere desire, emanating from well-thought reasons, which I’d rather save for next year.

Happy holiday to everyone!

May you be in good health!

May you be successful!

Above all, may you have a lot of joyful events in your life, and good news! For you deal with the bad news from morning till night.

Many thanks!