In this world we are all temporary, but history remains eternal. For this reason, those who lead my nation must bear in mind that they also carry its history on their shoulders. It matters little how far they advance the well-being of the nation, or of the people; but the safekeeping of the nation and its history is a duty. Otherwise, in every age, its traitors take with them even to the grave the passport of shame and treason, which no law, no constitution, no individual, no washing machine of parliamentary, legal or negligent dealings can wash clean.

It is 24 years since we toppled, once and for all, the monument of the dictator Hoxha, to open the road to the future and to freedom of thought, freedom of culture and economic freedom. But with the fall of a monument of concrete and iron, did change come to my homeland? Did the future improve and, above all, our national standing in the world?

Here we must stop, take a breath, weigh every word and every deed, and speak convincingly and with facts. With the fall of the dictatorship we also toppled the whole economic base of the nation, because it was communist. The factories, the plants, the building sites, the mines: when the dictator died he left them as the property of my nation; he did not take them with him. Into them had poured the sweat of our forebears, and of my generation too. For 24 years I have lived far from my lands. I have seen in several countries of Europe that to pull down a hut, or to build a hut, 1001 papers and decisions are required. In my homeland, on state property, everyone does as he pleases and as he wishes. But the purpose of my writing today does not concern the economic side; it has a higher purpose, a deeper one, much higher. During these 24 years of Democracy, "simply a borrowed name, this", like many other demagogic and deceitful names. During these 24 years roads and motorways have been built, ports and airports, and I ask: "With what money, at what percentage was it taken from the European banks, and so on?" The answer is mine again: "At the highest percentage in the world, up to 34%, as if we were living in a paradise of work and of its abundant income.

Lately the Rama government says: "Wages will remain stable, there is no increase, there is an increase only in taxes."

Again I have the right, in my own name and in the name of citizens, to ask: "Why?"

Every day the price of electricity rises, of gas, of water, of fuel, of taxes on profit and on property. And neither the rulers who left nor those who came explain this to the mass of their voters. All these increases are the result of the great works, the modern tunnels, the bridges, the ports, the roads that multiply every day. We open new fronts with borrowed money, and so even the child born today carries on his shoulders the debt loaded on him by our politicians, wheeler-dealers and short-sighted, or worse still, not short-sighted, but exploiting it in the interest of their own profits.

For 24 years we have been shouting about "great changes ahead", and I have gone blind and see not a single one of them. I see only one certain thing: the further fragmentation of the nation, the loss of its history, of its name, of its territory; that, to me, is the politics of 24 years. Let us leave this subject, which remains for us to discuss another time, and return to what is most important, most urgent, most painful and with the gravest consequences.

"EUROPE UNITED AND MY LANDS DIVIDED"

Traitor parliamentarians, short-sighted politicians, cast your eyes and see what is happening around us, and inside our own house.

In Shkodër a memorial is raised to Mustafa Pasha, a Turkish commander-in-chief. In Tirana, another Turkish pasha, who supposedly founded Tirana as a city. That is for the north of Albania. In the south it is worse still. In Përmet the Greek Orthodox Church has built a monastery in the Gorge of Këlcyrë, in whose name and on whose property rest the bones of Greek heroes. These Greek heroes came to Albania as invaders, to divide the lands with Italy, without asking and without permission from the soil on which this war between aggressors was being fought.

In Gjirokastër, Sarandë, Himarë and elsewhere, Greece pours out millions of dollars in pensions, paying Albanian pensioners as if they were its own property. Meanwhile the Albanian State cannot pay for books and support for language teaching for the 5,000 Albanians who live today in Ukraine. It cannot answer their request for primers and books for learning their mother tongue. Russia supplies Russian passports to all the citizens of Crimea, Greece supplies Greek passports to the south of Albania, and in the north of Kosovo Serbia supplies Serbian passports to the citizens of Mitrovica in Kosovo. In response to this situation, Sali Berisha makes a monument and a hero of the hated figure of Ahmet Zogolli, the traitor of the nation, and sells our territorial waters as if they were the property of his father, Ramë Berisha.

He rehabilitates the murderer of Hasan Prishtina, of Luigj Gurakuqi, of Avni Rustemi and others. O God, why do I not have a supernatural power to set justice in its place? Sali Berisha, a politician who, when he loses the prime minister's chair, weeps on television and in the street, and today organizes people to make the homeland unsafe. Extreme poverty; it only remains to put dynamite under Parliament itself, so that we are saved once and for all.

Beware, "honourable politicians"! I, a simple citizen, outside my lands, longing for parents and sisters, for the place where I was born, have placed you in the dock:

-What is the bust of a Turkish Mustafa doing in the city of Shkodër?

-What is the monument of a Turk, as the founder of the city of Tirana, doing there?

-What do the graves of Greek heroes in Përmet show, when even their bones, or their remains, belong to local citizens?

-What are the Greeks after, handing out Greek pensions and passports in the south of Albania?

-Thousands of churches and mosques on the body of the motherland, built by Turkey, Greece or the Arab countries: whose property are they?

-When we raise a monument to a Turkish pasha, and dehumanize the figure of a great Skanderbeg, what is the aim?

-When we make the monument of Skanderbeg, the founder of our lands and of our name, with a tail, with eyes bulging out like a terrified beast, what aim do we have?

-When some self-styled analysts, who do not even know their own mother, slander and deny her breast, what aim do they have, whom do they serve and by whom are they paid?

-Is there any law for the protection of national dignity, and of the figures who created this nation, for the defence of their values, their name and their work; and if there is, in which drawer, and for what interests, does it lie hidden and not act?

-Is this a sign of democracy?

I beg you, the people who voted for you want to know!

-Why is no monument raised in Turkey to Skanderbeg, Ali Pasha of Tepelena, Abdyl Frashëri, Ismail Qemali… etc… etc… etc? These figures I mention served Turkey, and some of them were members of the Turkish parliament.

-Would today's Turkish politics, which seeks to enter Europe as well, allow such an act?

-Would today's Greek Government accept that a monument be raised in Filat to the fallen of the great massacres?

-Would the Greeks accept that in Igoumenitsa, where the lands of the Chams remain occupied, among the half-ruined mosques, new mosques be built?

Attention, beware: you are denationalizing the nation and its lands without even realizing it, and worse still if you are doing it on purpose. You must be careful with history, so that afterwards you do not receive the brand of the traitor.

In these 24 years, the only things that have spread like nettle seed are mosques and churches. There is a great reason for this.

If we compare the time of the dictatorship with that of democracy, illiteracy has grown to the maximum. Simply and plainly, thousands of children stay shut up in towers, because we have gone back to the blood feud, as in the time of Lekë Dukagjini.

People run after churches, after mosques, because they have no one else to pray to for salvation from the extreme poverty you have created. I who write to you have lived in the town of Laç, where there is one of the most renowned churches in Albania. On its name day, 15 June, last year, the televisions, radios and newspapers trumpeted loudly that this church was visited by 250–300 thousand people on that day, and on every other day as well. I have seen these people with my own eyes, and you too can see dozens of videos on the internet: they all look like poor people, drowned in troubles and in the problems that property creates, which the state does not resolve by law. They pray for the blood feuds that the state does not protect them from by law. They pray for the future, because the state creates no conditions and opens no window for them to see the world and themselves better. They pray only to God and to Allah, but they are very far away and do not hear them, nor do they see their suffering. You who hold the fate of the nation in your hands are selling it, impoverishing it still more, until one day, just as in Crimea, the Greek will call all the Albanian citizens with Greek passports… ethnic Greeks. Until it is historically established that Tirana as a city was founded by a Turkish pasha, and likewise Shkodër, and likewise Gjakova, and likewise Mitrovica.

Gentlemen in power, who owns the churches and the mosques, and the priests and the imams too? How do they carry out their work, and who oversees this work, even though it is spiritual and religious?

The Greek bishop came as a temporary head of the Orthodox Church, and now he has become master in our house. The Serbs shout: "The monasteries and churches of Kosovo belong to Serbia". The Turk shouts: "The mosques and türbes are the property of Turkey". The Greek shouts: "The Orthodox churches and monasteries are the property of the Greek Autocephalous Church".

I put the question: "Then which are the property of the Albanian Nation and of its soil?"

So you are dividing Albania, cutting it to pieces, destroying it, selling it, without having any right. A call from far-off London: "Wake up from the lethargic sleep of personal gain, now while everything is still in your hands and your laws, if you have not yet signed the final contract of sale. Time and history will condemn you as traitors, and my nation too will become a baklava, where each one, knife in hand, will cut and snatch a piece, just as they have done throughout history until now.

Gentlemen of the government:

My people are no longer fed, nor any longer convinced, by fairy tales. The race towards Europe must be run with care, without opening national wounds, without opening channels through which waters flow that flood the fields of our interests, and without harming the dignity, the national, historical and linguistic values of Albania. Europe is truly a great sheepfold, where abundance, security, calm and well-being are on view; but look, behind these Crimea is visible too, the interests of each, the great appetites, and the profits as well, and the appropriation of our lands and riches, which they have never ceased to appropriate…