Albania: students hold the streets as Rama responds with security laws

According to Le Monde, the student-led protest in Albania is not losing momentum, despite a tougher crackdown. Clashes between police and demonstrators are multiplying. Prime Minister Edi Rama has announced new security-related legislative measures, while the protesters demand his resignation. So, as things stand, here is what we know: the dispatch says nothing about the number of demonstrators, the details of the announced measures or the toll of the clashes. We will not invent them.

The deeper question remains, and this is our reading, not an established fact. What does a government do when it feels itself wobbling? It does not answer the demand; it changes the ground. They asked for a resignation, they receive a legal arsenal. The political conflict is rebranded as a public order problem, and the street becomes a police file. It is an old government reflex: when you cannot persuade, you legislate against those who refuse to be persuaded.

The trap is double for the movement. On one side, the temptation to fight on the terrain chosen by the adversary, that of physical confrontation, where the state always has more shields than youth has paving stones. On the other, the opposite illusion: believing it would be enough to wait patiently for a well-mannered parliament to listen. Luxemburg mocked those who dreamed of a class struggle reduced to a parliamentary duel in which the street had been abolished. She also pointed out that mass action does not eliminate street fighting, but places it as one moment in a long political struggle. The clash is not the goal; it is an episode.

Duration is therefore the real test. A movement does not survive the truncheon through courage alone; it survives if it takes root, if the assemblies decide, if the universities, the neighbourhoods and the workplaces take hold of it, if everyone learns while marching what an organisation no ministry has built can do. Luxemburg observed that political events and encroachments by power often ripen the masses well before a perfect organisation and a full treasury exist. Waiting for the ideal structure is a luxury that governments never grant.

As for the laws announced, let us apply the test we would apply to any reform: do they strengthen the confidence and power of those below, or do they aim to demobilise them? To ask the question here is almost to answer it. But we will wait for the text before judging its letter.

We shall see whether the resignation demanded comes or not. What is certain is that a government that must pass laws to silence its youth has already lost the argument. The question is whether it still has time to lose the rest.