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The President of the Republic, Ilir Meta, held today, at their request, a working meeting with representatives of the Association “Indigenous Durrës”.
In this conversation, he got acquainted with the efforts of this association to stop the urban massacre and the destruction of the values of the historical, archaeological and cultural heritage of the coastal city.
Representatives of the Association “Indigenous Durrës” asked President Meta to support them in their activity and receive from him full support for all initiatives to protect Durrës from arbitrary decision-making and unconsulted with the local community.
“Thank you for the invitation and for this very fruitful conversation, in order to strengthen cooperation, in the interest of the community of Durrës and beyond. I have always believed that the voice of Durrës should be heard by all for the development, modernization and Europeanization of your city but also of our entire country. The voice of the citizens and intellectuals of Durrës has been tried to be silenced and the latest case was the very bandit behavior towards the president of your Association. It was an attempt to intimidate not an individual, nor to simply intimidate an association, but to intimidate every movement, every revival of citizenship, of respecting and honoring the traditions of protection of historical and cultural values, as well as the expression of gratitude to the biggest and most prominent names, who have given so much to Durrës and Albania, in terms of preserving national and cultural identity and urban and civic traditions. Durrës carries great potentials for its development, for the fight against poverty and for sustainable and long-term development. But unfortunately Durrës has lost all the physiognomy preserved for centuries with great care and attention. We must therefore redouble our efforts to protect our cultural heritage, caring far more than we have so far. We must encourage any civic initiative to enforce compliance with applicable laws, because we have a law that every public act must be subject to public consultation by the authority that initiates or invests, whether at the central or local level. Good governance is based only on accountability, which means that the elected, from the President onwards, must be afraid of the citizens! Citizens should not be afraid of those who are elected to serve you and be accountable. Since we are on the eve of the historic elections of April 25, everything starts from the snatch of the vote, from the free vote and its sanctification. Therefore, it is time for April 25 to be a day of referendum to establish the sanctity of the vote in this country, so that the vote of the President, as of the simplest citizen is finally equal! On April 25, we have a historic opportunity to restore the constitutional order, the rule of law and at the same time to guarantee the power of the citizen over power, over the elected and to return them to their service! On April 25, the people decide the sanctity of the vote and the Constitution of the Republic of Albania for the next 100 years. The Constitution clearly states: “Sovereignty belongs to the people in the Republic of Albania. “The sovereign speaks through a free vote.” Therefore, anyone who tries to encroach on the free vote has practically provoked the sovereign and must expect all the consequences from him. I am here to give a message to all civil society to cooperate and commit to free and fair elections, to monitor and call on all citizens to vote, because this is very important. No citizen has the right to demand accountability tomorrow if he does not go to the polls. No citizen who trades his vote has the right to demand accountability, because the one who buys the vote has lost all obligation to you. In a democracy, the vote is the greatest power that a citizen has, because the vote empowers you, the vote abolishes you. The vote chooses you, the vote punishes you. I believe that our people are very clear and very aware of this issue. You know that free and fair elections, the main condition of the European Union, are holding hostage this process of opening negotiations of our country. It is unforgivable that we still have no hope for the opening of negotiations due to the lack of free and fair elections and the non-investigation of manipulations made in the past. So this is a final moment to restart democracy, through civic awakening, free, fair and equal voting. In this way we must stop the depopulation of Durrës and all of Albania, because it is a stubborn fact and based on European statistics and not on statements. I hope that we will further intensify our cooperation, unmasking every effort that intimidates the citizen’s voice, to shake any apathy towards the protection of cultural heritage and not to expect injustice to affect us individually, to react against it. It is enough for injustice to affect any of us in our community and our country, to warn us that we can all be victims of an unjust system that we tolerate with our silence and drowsiness.“, Said Meta.
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