[ALBSA-Info] Blowing up the bunkers in Albania

[Iris Pilika]

BBC World Service
Thursday, 4 May, 2000, 17:05 GMT 18:05 UK

Blowing up the bunkers in
Albania

As Albania's Minister for Culture, Youth and Sport, Edi Rama is
trying to forge the country a new image

By Max Easterman

Albania is a mess. It's Europe's poorest nation by a
handsome margin. Still, anyone who gets to know the
country, as I have over the past ten years, ends up
loving its landscapes, its people and its atmosphere.

Listen to this programme in full

But, inevitably, they will
also end up deploring its
lawlessness, its bemused
tolerance of corruption in
public life, its chaotic
administration. Ten years
of raw, unfettered
capitalism (after nearly fifty
of isolationist, utterly
hard-line Communism),
have combined to reduce
many Albanians to
desperation and
subsistence living.

So it's almost baffling for
an outsider to hear that the
new Minister of Culture, Edi Rama, sees culture as a
kind of battering ram to blow open the windows of
Albanian social life, and let in some much-needed
artistic light. But he insists it is also a vital way to blow
away the endemic corruption, which has scarred political
life for so long.

But Edi Rama is man full of
surprises. He complains
about how little money he
has, but spends sixty
thousand dollars to
subsidise Albania's first
commercial cinema -
showing Hollywood films. He
defends this, because he
believes letting the outside
world in is more important
than worrying about what it
brings in.

Edi Rama is a
no-nonsense,
get-things-done man, who
also enjoys flamboyant
clothes and surrounding
himself with pretty girls
(though he insists they also have to be able to do their
jobs well.)

He is a painter and sculptor, who has abandoned art for
politics. Ten years ago, as the Communist system
began to totter, he refused to get involved in the new
democratic politics. He preferred to snipe from the
sidelines, and when democracy showed itself to be
almost as corrupt as the old regime, he left for Paris, to
continue his crusade against Albanian political
corruption from France.

A key image in his work was
that of the concrete
bunkers, which disfigure so
much of the Albanian
landscape. The former
dictator, Enver Hoxha, put
up 600,000 of them. This
was ostensibly to repel
attack from whatever
quarter it might come, but
in reality created a surreal
atmosphere of permanent
insecurity amongst the
population. It is this
mentality which Edi Rama is
determined to break down.

Unless Albanians can be
persuaded to come out of
their psychological and cultural bunker, he explains,
they will not hold civil servants or politicians to account.

But here, the contradictions of his character show
themselves. He makes his colleagues in the Ministry
take personal responsibility for their decisions, even
fines them for missing deadlines. But he also
dominates his weekly departmental meetings, and runs
them with iron efficiency. He makes appointees do
exactly what he wants, leading to charges that they're
mere stooges.

Zana Cela, his new Director
of the Opera and Ballet
Theatre, stands accused of
having more beauty than
brains. The charge is laid
by the musicians she
sacked, after a bitter
hunger strike, no less,
mounted because they
opposed the introduction of
competitive contracts, and
an open bidding system for
project grants.

These are all Edi's policies;
but Zana Cela points out
with asperity, that when she
took over, the Opera and
Ballet were down to just eight performances a year, and
most of the musicians and technical staff seemed to
spend more time drinking than playing their
instruments. Those who stayed on now have to provide
at least two performances a week.

Edi's latest project is to clean up the heart of the
capital, Tirana, from the central square, Skanderbeg,
with its neo-Stalinist Opera House and National
Museum, through the Ministry District of fine (but
neo-Fascist) Italian buildings, put up in the 30s, and on
down the Boulevard of the Heroes of the Nation to the
University.

His aim is to create a city
Albanians can be proud of,
to give them back some
dignity. Out in the country
towns, local people are
sceptical, wondering why he
can't spend the money on a
football pitch or a decent
cinema for them.

Edi Rama is unapologetic.
"I have to start
somewhere", he says, "and
I have to show my
colleagues in other
Ministries, that you can
take unpopular decisions
and survive. That's why I
refused to back down over
the changes at the Opera -
even when the musicians
went on hunger-strike. "

"We had to win, and we did, and the Opera is now doing
its job for the first time in years. When other Ministers
can work like this, Albania will have finally begun the
long march into the real world of the 21st century."

Also in this edition of Crossing Continents: a visit to one
of the illegal shanty towns ringing Tirana, and a trip to the
beach, to discover why Albania is daring to promote tourism.
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