FLASH
Shkruar nga Thoma Gëllçi
But Nano spoke differently. He called for openness, reform, and political culture.
Fatos Nano, former Prime Minister and one of the most important figures of the difficult years of Albanian transition, passed away today. With his departure, a page in our politics closes, which for many people was associated with the effort to give the country a politics of reason, debate and citizenship, not simply of power.
It was the spring of 1992, immediately after the March 22 elections. Albania was entering the first era of change of power by vote. At that time, Fatos Nano called me to his office as chairman of the Socialist Party, which was just rising from the ruins of the Labor Party. The climate was gloomy, the enthusiasm of the fall of communism was being replaced by divisions, exclusions and revenge. But Nano spoke differently. He called for openness, reform and political culture.
He proposed that I take over the management of “Zërit të Popullit”, a newspaper that needed to be reborn, without the old party spirit. It was a bold move for that time: to place a young journalist, without much experience and no connection to the party, at the head of its official organ. Nano’s faith in innovation and change was clearly visible there.
In those months, Nano brought a spirit that has not often been seen in Albanian politics since, the spirit of freedom that stems from culture, not from power. He loved the press as a place of debate, not as a party megaphone; and the opposition as democratic control, not as an enemy.
But everything changed very quickly. In the summer of 1993, Fatos Nano was arrested on political charges. It was an act of revenge that marked a dark turn for the country. He was imprisoned, but he was not broken. From prison, he sent letters full of reflection, humor, and advice to his friends in the party. They began with the words “Dear brother” and ended with a witty joke that only he knew how to make.
Two days after his arrest, they took me from the newspaper office and sent me to prison 313, along with several other Socialist Party officials. For me it lasted a short time, but for him it lasted years. His imprisonment became a symbol of the lack of justice and the politics of revenge that the transition sowed.
When he was released from prison after almost four years, Nano was more mature and clearer in his vision. He reformed the Socialist Party and returned it to power in 1997. History proved him right: he had not been an enemy of the state, but a man who had paid with his freedom for the idea of freedom.
For those who knew him closely, Fatos Nano will remain a man of dialogue, culture, and clever irony, the kind that doesn't offend you, but makes you think. He knew the limits of power and believed that a country only moves forward when people can speak freely, even about those they don't like.
Today, as his name passes from news to history, what remains is the spirit he left behind: the memory that even in times of imprisonment, there can be freedom. And that this spirit, more than any power, is what gives meaning to politics.
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