“Ignorantia non est argumentum” – ignorance is no argument, the Latins say.
But unfortunately today, at a time when information is being filtered less and less into the sieve of truth; when anyone can post whatever they wish into their iphone’s media network and when streams of information frantically bring all sorts of true and false combined news; when truth and falsehood cross the river alike and when, moreover, the political and media environment worldwide is severely infected by the defamation virus – fake news – ignorance is no longer fought as before, but it is being fed more and more, according to the interests of informants of all levels and categories.
A typical case is “give away the sea to the Greek,” “the Greek is taking the sea away,” which have become like those old songs that revive emotions every time they are played on youtube, despite being an old fabrication already, since our negotiations with the Greek side were being materialized in a concrete document, based on international norms and the Law of the Sea.
The scandalous distortion back then of a public statement by the Greek Foreign Minister on the “6 to 12 nautical mile expansion of Greece’s maritime waters” and the orchestrated attack on the new agreement on delimitation of maritime boundaries was typical case of ignorance as an argument through toxic nationalism. The same, completely correct statement by Prime Minister Mitsotakis in recent days, is again feeding the lawsuit as an argument of betrayal of our government!
The truth is simple. The maritime border is not like the fence between two houses and when Greek authorities state they would expand by 6 to 12 nautical miles, this doesn’t mean that Greece will engulf Albanian territorial waters, but it means that the neighbouring country is just exercising its right stemming from the Convention on the Law of the Sea, adopted and signed in 1982 in Montego Bay. For the record, Albania has made the same thing in 1990, at the UN, and it has never been contested by our neighbors. It is in effect even today. This right of ours is not a negotiable issue for the delimitation of maritime borders, and cannot violate any right in any way, neither for Albania and nor for Greece.
The reason why the mastermind behind the attack on our agreement with Greece, which has yet to be finalized in the spirit of dialogue and constructive approach by both parties, do not want that an agreement is reached is actually completely irrelevant to the truth about agreement which has yet been finalized. It is simply, alone and sadly, a cause for power struggle.
But one this is for sure, as sure as a gun: Ignorantia non est argumentum. Ignorance is no argument. It is neither to blame as long as it is not used as an argument. Hence, whoever interested in this issue does not have to become an accomplice to those who love the sea for their political appetites and who shamelessly feed ignorance through poison of nationalism. Instead they should refer to serious sources of information and not the mouths of political charlatans and digital jesters, defending themselves from the virus of slander under the guise of knowledge. And if he’s going to take the short-cut, he needs to make his mind about one single fact:
I and the Socialist Party may have many shortcomings, we can make a lot of mistakes, yet we never ever use power to the detriment of the national interest! This virtue has characterized this party since the day of its birth and makes it unlike the others, who out of ignorance or greed or both, have more than once violated the national interest in these 30 years of democratic pluralism.
