The election results are still being counted and there might as well be surprises around the corner.
However, the current consolidated trend with around 40 percent of the national ballots being counted is that the incumbent Socialist Party is likely to retain its governing mandate. The caveat, as expected by many, is that Edi Rama will need the 1 (definite) or even 2 (very likely) mandates of the PSD , an old party that Tom Doshi took over from Skender Gjinushi, a retired political figure and a remnant of the Communist times.
Tom Doshi was rendered public enemy number one by the Embassy of the United States in Tirana after his designation as persona non grata due to involvement in grand corruption by the State Department. In multiple declarations the Ambassador Kim called for him not to be included in the Assembly and the executive.
Doshi would not be part of his cabinet or coalition, Rama said, tongue in cheek, in tv shows during the campaign.
With no need to flash his charm in tv screens, Tom Doshi carried out a deep grassroots campaign and is about to acquire one of the most phenomenal victories in Albanian politics: to be an individual kingmaker while simultaneously being completely in the backstage. Doshi resigned today officially form his expected mandate ( the one he has definitely won according to official current projections). He asked the CEC to replace him immediately with the other people on the party list.
Doshi had registered his party in the elections with another interim chairman at the helm.
The Socialist Party will sound the drums of celebration for their third mandate. The international community will applaud the correct and calm conduit of elections and self-gloat at their moderating role.
However, the winner of 2021 is one person only who triumphed even above the unthinkable, the US Embassy or as known the ever-powerful diplomatic powerhouse casting its grand shadow at “Rruga e Elbasanit”. To their credit he has to celebrate in the shadows, however his win is palpable and looms large over all of the country.
Tom Doshi is the employer on whom you count at the end of the month to feed your family. He is the way out of the failing public healthcare system when you don’t have millions to send your ill kid abroad. He respects you by showing up at your family wedding. He speaks very little. He is surrounded all the time by bodyguards. He commands influence, fear, adulation.
Tom Doshi is the quiet ugly unbeatable pragmatism that keeps people alive in the present while suffocating the future of their kids. He is not only the winner of these elections, he is the champion of the entire 30 years transition.
And Albanians who still have the strength to reflect, not many left with that kind of patience, will need to take a hard look at themselves and what it means that their country and their future now belongs to Tom Doshi and the model he sets in stone for generations to come.
