State’s Vagabond

By Luan Rama

Since the birth of the state as an organized power over a set of norms and rules as regulatory and coercive mechanisms and institutions to run society itself, the “weapons” or “signs” of the state have been defined and functionalized. In the course of the evolution in time they have come down to us to this day as the gendarme or the policeman, according to time and place, but also as the judge, the prosecutor, the guard, the soldier, as the inspector of customs, taxes, health and so on.

Therefore, as soon as you see the police, but also when you meet the judge, when you meet the soldier or when the inspector of any service comes to you, the state, security, and trust are perceived in the consciousness of each of us.

Respect for the state and the law is conditioned by the way or the standard of how they approach the citizen.

So, the relationship with them is the relationship of the state with the citizen, and vice versa – of the citizen with their state. It is a relationship that is built on law and that it imposes respect for the ethics and the code of communication and correct behavior along with abiding by the law.

Not always and everywhere this relationship has been and is a civic relationship, which is mostly conditioned by the cultural level and quality of citizenship of the society itself.

Even in countries with very high standards of citizenship and law enforcement education such as Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, etc., there are cases of excesses and incidents in the relationship of the civil servant with the citizen. But in contrast to them where the punishment is exemplary in places like Albania, we commonly encounter the hooligan who is protected from impunity instead of the state employee.

The most recent cases when employees in municipal police uniforms appear as thugs in relations with citizens are just a few in the multitude of such cases that unfortunately constitute an ugly occurrence and a social phenomenon proving that Albanians have not succeeded to reach the levels of being called an educated society.

The vagabond of the state in Albania has turned into an institution where the arrogant and the ignorant, the thief and the corrupt, unfortunately found everywhere have mixed into one. He can be found in the policeman on the street as he throws the stick of an old man the age of his father. Also he can be found in the other one who drags a mother who goes out to sell a bunch of salad or some fruits of her own garden on the side of the road. He can be found in the boss or employer, but also in the mayor, the director, the deputy and in those who govern and run Albania, making the state itself the biggest rogue.

I am not one of those who take one case for granted and who can hardly wait to raise their hand and point the finger to say: look, these are the policemen, these are the customs officers or inspectors, these are the Albanian doctors or the deputies.

Impunity as a prevailing phenomenon, the corrupt system of recruitment and governance, the lack of the most necessary moral scruples unfortunately make the vagabond of the state the face of the Albanian society.

I do not know how the children of the elderly citizen felt that in one of the recently published cases a state thug in the uniform of a municipal police officer, after breaking the old man’s walking stick, the “friend” that age imposes on him, throws it away. But I know and I want to say that citizens should take that vagabond of the state by the throat as a whole society and show the deserved place to him and his boss, who did not expel that unworthy bandit from the ranks of the state police.

Albanians continue to be an amorphous society without the nerve of civic reaction. Albanians continue to prove that they are still a society with great cultural distortions and shortcomings. They are still far from being a civil society.

Indifference makes Albanians not realize that each of them might be in the same condition being violated by the rogue of the state tomorrow as it happened with that father or grandfather.

So, if Albanians do not break free from apathy and if they do not see the violence or abuse of the state hooligan to another as to themselves, Albanians will not be able to feel the state as of their own, but they will regard him as identical with the hooligan. /Gazeta Shqiptare- Argumentum.al