Speech by Prime Minister Edi Rama at reception with diplomatic corps accredited to Albania:
Honourable Mr. Dean of the Diplomatic Corps!
Your excellency ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions accredited to Albania!
I am grateful to your Dean for his kind words about the Albanian people and the government. These words, according to the diplomatic practices, represent everyone and each of you in particular and I believe it is no exaggeration to say that never before has this speech sounded more familiar and amiable than tonight.
Indeed, this Year-End Reception, both traditional and completely unique as it is, just like the previous Year-End Receptions will not and there is no way that it could be the same with those due to be hosted in the coming years. My staff even started to question whether this reception should be hosted, or not, just like it was the case for the Lights Festival in the hardest and disaster-stricken cities and in the throes of overwhelming grief and pain of the loss of 51 people.
But, just like the Year-End’s Lights Festival, it was impossible for this reception to take place too, with each and every one of you, in these dramatic moments for Albania, feeling and showing to be equally Albanian as the Albanians themselves. In the face of rubble and tears on November 26, your duty on that day, in the strict sense of this word, was just to report to your respective capitals, while I know in person that you didn’t even wait for the dawn of the day to offer your solidarity and aid.
I don’t intend to ever reveal the text messages you send me and I don’t store them in any archive, but I have stored Leyla’s text message in a special folder so that once my son Zaho, now five, grows up a little more and when he makes the first question about the United States of America, I would read him that very text message to introduce him as an Albanian with the friendly U.S. Just as, if and surely there will come a day when my son will become angry at the European Union – everyone gets angry at the EU – I would tell him the story of landing of the search and rescue teams on the evening of November 26 and heroism, in the true sense of the world, of those men and women in different uniforms, who spoke different languages and risked their own lives to save Albanian lives.
And indeed, it will be much easier to introduce him with history of relations with the neighbours around us, not by starting with the political disputes or historical misunderstandings, but with the story about pulling an Albanian boy from the rubble after almost 24 hours by the fantastic Greek search and rescue teams, or the narration about a battle jointly launched by rescuers from Kosovo and Serbia to save ordinary people of this country from the grip of death.
It was a miracle of the Italian search and rescue knights, who totally devoted, along with the highly disciplined and determined Turkish rescuers, laid siege to the death-turned castle rubble and pulled Albanian lives from there.
What about our Kosovo brothers and sisters in uniform; how it could be described, without minimizing furious heartbeat of whole Kosovo, everything demonstrated during their entire unforgettable operation.
Not a word, not even a million words, would fully describe what my eyes have been permanently engraved in my memory.
How could one possibly describe it as beautifully as I saw it during those endless hours – when the daytime looked like it was a night-time and night-time looked like daytime – France I thought I knew enough to admire its greatness and beauty until the search and rescue legionaries showed up with their amazing splendor and agility in Durres.
What about the Israeli team that bolstered courage and calmness among Durres citizens, while humbly and calmly dealing with the situation! They seemed as if coping with a summer storm.
These two weeks are indeed a history within our country’s history. A living history of true solidarity, a word we continually use, but which we saw over the past two weeks embodied in people, various flags, uniforms and languages, as if they were here coming along with an order following the October’s psychological earthquake, to embody what the Europe’s founding fathers once wrote that when Europeans work together it will suffice to figure out that despite temporary divisions, or geographic barriers, there is only a shared horizon of goals and ideas.
I believe I wouldn’t exaggerate when saying that the way our own rescuers worked shoulder to shoulder with the French, Italian, Turkish, Romanian, Croatian, Serbian and Kosovo rescuers, and of course many others, they are the embodiment of what Mone, Schuman, Adenauer had in mind designed in their imagination what today seems the outcome of a crazy courage, the European Union.
I didn’t certainly forget Switzerland, but even though Switzerland was as extraordinary as its name on those extraordinary days and nights, I separated it, because it has opted to be alone in Europe, but also outside Europe too.
Rubble are always a reminder of wars, battlegrounds, but the search and rescue operations are perhaps the only battles where one risks his own life to save others’ lives. In other battlegrounds in Solferino in 1959, Cardinal Montini, the future Pope Paul VI told General De Gaulle: This is what the Europe of tomorrow will root in, the ruins of the end of wars, the war battlefields for life.
With a special gratitude expression for all of you, to which the entire cabinet and the Assembly of Albania certainly join, I would like to assure you that this is exactly the way I see these rubble and battlefields, where your people and our people fought to pull out and save people of ours, as the platform of a new stage, not only for the affected areas, but for the entire country, from the immediate earthquake response to a rebuilding process, where we definitely need to have you on our side and be together with us.
The reconstruction process has started. We have set up the National Rebuilding Committee and we have started intense work to design the reconstruction projects.
Few days ago, we presented and adopted the next year’s state budget, which projects an initial allocation of around 200 million dollars in order not to waste time and kick off the reconstruction process, which will take a lot more than this amount and our priority is to provide a fair, stable and lasting solution to every family that has become homeless due to this natural disaster, but Rusoi warned us to be careful regarding these cases.
The world of realities has its limits, while that of the imagination knows no bounds. So, we need to be realistic and I believe we are and, on one hand, we know pretty well that it would take a lot more for the whole rebuilding process to complete, but on the other hand we do not want the rebuilding process be carried out at the expense of the future of all citizens and children of this country. To this end, we have projected no new tax and we do not plan to call off major investments and we do not project a new debt increase. The defence budget won’t be affected either, because as NATO members we have made a commitment and our government doesn’t avoid commitment, no matter how great the excuse might be, and, moreover, despite the excuse of desperate need to finance reconstruction, we cannot shun that table where we have been granted the honour to sit together with all other NATO member states.
Over the past years, we have done a lot of work to put the country’s economy and finance on solid foundation and we cannot touch that foundation. Just like we have done a lot to prepare steps towards the sustainable development and we cannot stop these steps.
Of course, I am proud that despite the disaster’s tremendous magnitude and the powerful shaking of the entire fabric of the society and the state, we have coped with the first initial moment with dignity. You, or better say many of you, are witnesses to the effects of an earthquake of a natural disaster on the society, the state and the government of your own countries. And I believe you share same opinion that by succeeding in housing the homeless people in hotels that offer optimum accommodation and service conditions, or in rental homes, in most of cases more comfortable than their now destroyed homes, Albania certainly deserves respect.
We know quite well this is provisionally and we know pretty well we are racing against time. Therefore, we need to do whatever it takes so that we make sure that time doesn’t crash with us, which means that we should combine the provisional deadlines with the deadlines necessary to ensure people return to their normal daily lives.
We want to rebuild in the fullest sense of the word. We want to build in line with new and exemplary standards in terms of planning and urban life quality, wishing at the same time to accommodate all of those in rural areas in much better houses they used to live prior to the earthquake.
The Bible offers a proverb that suits to this moment: “Through wisdom is a house built, and by understanding it is established. By knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”
I have specifically used the holy sayings over all these days and I have also found out that some have wrongfully perceived me as an imam, or a priest, but I think that the holy phrases are an asset of entire mankind and their not a property or a monopoly of the church or mosque attenders. They are a valuable asset that, in cases like this in particular, are a great moral support for the individual and society.
We have yet to make a complete assessment of the quake damages and we are intensely working together with the experts you have made available to verify damages and formulate step by step the final damage bill. However, we are aware that the bill is too high and I believe you would share with me readiness to settle this bill that we can face with your help only.
I am very grateful to the European Commission for promptly activating – at an unusual speed for the European Commission, for the sake of truth – a mechanism to make available an initial financial aid that I hope will be followed by other aid packages. At the same time, I am very grateful to many European leaders who have agreed to organize a large donors’ conference to support Albania. As I am very grateful to the President of the Republic of Turkey, who has made a solemn and personal commitment by engaging his country, helping also to engage other countries in that part of the world, just like I am grateful to all other friends, who are present here and their countries, which have expressed readiness to help us. Under these circumstances, it is important that you understand my insistence on reiterating that we need support. No country could handle such situation alone.
It was 11 April 1865, when light at the end of the tunnel of a merciless civil war in America was seen when Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech I think it is the Bible of reconstruction. Amid all that destruction, where no one but him saw hope, he began his speech with hope, speaking precisely of rebuilding, being confident that the deep wound of all that gruelling conflict was there to build a stronger country, far more worthy and way more just, the very America we know today.
“We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” is the first sentence of that speech which I am recalling in front of you today, going on with another excerpt that fits best to the time we are going through and that is taken from a book, which strangely enough – and I haven’t still figured out how – has managed to escape Communist censorship, the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Garcia Marques, a book which ends with an apocalyptical climax, with the main character saying: “It’s enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
And I could have kept constantly reiterating this very sentence, when the search and rescue teams landed. Because what I was able to experience and understand is that in case of a disaster, fear of solitude is greater than the disaster’s magnitude. And the fact that Albania is not alone today, and saying this in a country that for half of a century got to stay alone and move in solitude, renders a completely new significance to our entire endeavour to join other nations and people of the family we have historically believed to belong to, but which history has never allowed us like today to belong in.
Those who have attended similar receptions over the past years, know quite well that such meeting as usually would end with a book given as a gift. But this time your libraries will not be enriched with my books, because this evening there is no way of avoiding a dedication to the search-rescue teams and just because it is more decent to give than to take, you will not remain empty-handed. But I would like to tell you something. I am a product of God’s or nature’s generosity. I have yet to choose between them, because I am so tall that I have never felt myself as a small one when in front of others. Since I quit playing basketball, I can hardly recall any meeting where I have come across two or three persons taller than me. This is not rhetorical, but I can say that over the past two weeks I feel shorter than Erion Braçe. And today, being smaller compared to the heroism of all those heroes who were among us, common people in the countries they came from; parents, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters left just the way they came, just like guardian angels. And that’s why it is not about height, neither physical, nor political, nor social height, but it is all about, as St. Saint Paul puts it, it was is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height and incredible heroism.
There is one verse that goes the same in all scriptures, in the Bible, the Qur’an and the Torah: “whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the lives of all men.”
I don’t know what to say about those who have saved more than one life. I do not know what is the striking definition of devotion and the reward for the courage of all those from 13 countries and two EU and UN teams that saved more than one life here. But I know what they did right in front of our eyes will play a greater role in our constitution vis-à-vis Europe than any European Commission report. It will play a greater role in our constitution in relation to the neighbouring countries than all histories we have been told or all disputes we inherit. And it will certainly play a greater role in our relationship with ourselves.
I tired you out by bringing all these examples, but I would like to give one last example. In the second act, suffering Hamlet, who was possessed by delirium, begged for the nightmare, bad dreams, these images that haunted and tormented him to end and he was ready to forgive his kingdom in turn of the serenity of his soul to be restored.
Your search-rescue teams are the first and foremost reason why the nightmare of that never-ending night when every one of us was willing to give everything away in return for the anguish to end turned into hope and faith for you and all our people.
I am convinced that a medal means almost nothing, but it is a medal awarded for the first time. It has approved long time ago, but it has never been awarded before. It’s a medal that’s hard to decide whom to award to; Gold Medal for Professional Recognition.
The fact that it is being awarded for first time to these people will definitely make it even harder to give it to others in the future, but they would feel very fortunate because they would rank among these troops, whose dedication and professional abilities are among the most precious things that states have created in the service of the people.
I would like you that along with these medals extend to the commanders of these troops the most heartfelt expression of gratitude on behalf of whole Albanian people and the wish for the happiest and most prosperous year for their families. May they hold this red and black medal on their flags and insignia, because the medal is an expression of pain and hope of an entire people that they revived so quickly spiritually thanks to their heroism.
Thank you everyone!