Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at today’s ceremony to commemorate the Martyrs of the Nation:
There are a few important days in the calendar of civilized nations. Among them, the day dedicated to the martyrs of the homeland has a special place, because it is a special day dedicated to a special memory.
Many countries have chosen to mark it on the commemorative calendar of the martyrs with the day of some important victory. We have marked it with the day on which Qemal Stafa, who was the symbol of youthful idealism on the road of our history and the symbol of a new generation looking for a new world, was killed. A generation that opposed to Fascism, the most organized invading horde the world has known to date for the strength of its destruction. It lavished also on tiny and broken Albania with all the cruelty of its omnipotence. But in Albania it encountered all the strength of the patriotic resistance.
Today’s May 5th has a particularity because it coincides with the 70th anniversary of resistance’s victory over fascism. This victory was crowned after a terrible world war with the capitulation of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. And this coincidence gives us a meaningful picture of the compliance of the Albanian sacrifice in that war with the sacrifice of all freedom-loving peoples who stood on the right side of history.
The subsequent course of history in the wrong direction and the increasingly deeper opposition to the freedoms and rights of the Albanian citizens not only does not weaken, but makes even brighter the light of inner strength of Qemal Stafa and of all young Albanians who chose to walk on the difficult but right path of history; in tragic moments when it seemed that the powerful enemies of Albania and of mankind were intended to write history with fire and iron, and opposing them seemed a suicidal madness. But history was in fact written by thousands of young Albanian girls and boys who, compared to the enemies who landed on our country armed with the latest ammunition that the world had known until then, had only one weapon; they had the right that made them walk the sea and go in the right direction without losing the way despite of the blood, wounds, pain but also of derision.
Five were the words that, without any distinction of religion, region and idea, united little Albania and allowed the Albanian people to be placed, not only for past generations but also for those to come, among those who liberated the world we live in. The next fifty years that brought the hell of an ideology that transformed the ideals of Qemal Stafa and his generation in a diabolical formula of the dictatorship of the proletariat, have however taken nothing from the inspirational power of those five words.
Without any distinction of religion, region and idea remains still to this day the firmest point of reference for walking in the right direction, while struggling with partition temptations that threaten our religious, social and political coexistence on the difficult but only road of European Albania in the United Europe.
We come here today with the humility of ordinary people in front of the memory of those who have done with their lives something extraordinary, but also with the pride of being part of a political and social effort to transform the homeland of Qemal Stafa and of our martyrs in a country worthy of their sublime sacrifice.
Dear attendees,
Winston Churchill would say that “The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult”. This quotation of one of the most influential people in the history of humanity is true for every victory in the history of the world, of the people, of communities and of an individual’s life. This is a great truth that is valid also on the way of our efforts after the political victory as Alliance for European Albania and of the governance in the name of values, ideas and of the highest aspiration to revive an Albania exhausted by unresolved problems which remain unacceptable twenty-five years after the liberation from the dictatorship of the proletariat. But today we are proud because we have not closed even for a moment our eyes in front of the problems, and we have tried with our heart and soul to stop the free course of the past two decades. We remain confident that everything we managed to do in a very short time, considering the number and the severity of those unacceptable problems that were inherited while getting worse from year to year, is marking Albania’s turning point in the right direction.
The road ahead of us is still long, and the journey is very tiring for anyone who tries to continue in the right direction of honest work and respect for the law. This road is still very insecure for anyone who has been living for years in the poverty generated by the poverty of aspirations of those who promised the capitalist paradise for everyone, but built instead the hell of urban destruction, economic ruin and social desperation all over the body of Albania mistreated by the power of a greedy ignorance.
The poverty of aspirations of the powerful who let the big problems of the victory of democracy follow a free course, letting as a consequence a long time flow in favor of poverty, unemployment, corruption, not only prevented the old wounds opened by the dictatorship of the proletariat to heal, but it generated new degrading wounds for Albania that had just emerged from the ideological hell. The policy of free course generated huge debts, borrowing the future to get by in the present, and postponing tomorrow the solution of today problems. The interest of being in power at all costs has become the driving force that denied Albania the bitter medicine of truth in economics, finance, education, health and so on, by offering to Albanians the sweet honey of lies. Instead of the radical transformation through the necessary, though painful, operations of the cancer that has affected every vital area of the country’s body, they chose the deformation that produces a day-by-day governance in order to extend the life of power and shorten the road to the future of the country. Therefore, the state has never been able to be a state in anything, but in everything has remained a mere attempt.
Since today it’s our turn to have a say through our work as leaders of the country, we have chosen to lead the country on the road of the future through a radical transformation, despite the inevitable costs, and not to extend the life of our power, despite the inevitable temptation.
We decided to be the personification of the fight against the poverty of aspirations, first of all, which has generated and generates many sorts of populism, ideas that have short life, wrong recipes for quick solutions which do nothing but postpone to tomorrow the solution of serious problems of real people, just to save the power for today.
We are ready to sacrifice ourselves body and soul in this effort that no one before us has tried to make, and we are doing this with all the love of a parent who allows his own child to undergo a surgery that is a matter of life or death, not because he wants to torture his child but because he wants to save him; a parent that does not give to his child a bitter medicine because he wants to cause him any despair, but because he wants him to be healed.
This is the right direction for the country. This is the right direction to make tomorrow better than the present for those who today are worse than they were yesterday. This is the right direction to make the dream of the European state of Albanians become reality. This dream was the reason for which gave their lives those who today deserve our deepest humility and greatest gratitude, the Martyrs of the Liberation War.
Eternal glory to the Martyrs of the Homeland!
Thank you!
