Tirana, 29 August 2026
From Flamingos to Magpies: Why Transparency Matters.
The Flamingo Revolution began as an outburst of civic energy: spontaneous, non-partisan, driven by anger at a system that, over thirty-five years of transition, has gradually damaged education, justice, and ultimately the state itself. Today, on its ninetieth day, the movement has reached a decisive point. Will this energy remain scattered among dozens of groups, each moving in its own direction, or can it become a force capable of opening a real way forward, including the conditions necessary for the establishment of a technical government?
Moving from an unstructured protest to a political force with real weight cannot happen on uncertain foundations. It requires transparency. At this stage, transparency is no longer a fine principle to place in a declaration. It may determine whether the movement grows, survives, or slowly falls apart.
Three months have passed. There is undeniably something positive in the multiplication of groups and initiatives, but very little has actually crystallized. One initiative, called “Kuvendi…,” does not seem to have attracted many protesters. The hesitation surrounding it appears to come, at least partly, from the suspicion that something different may lie behind what is presented publicly. Whether that suspicion is justified or not, the problem itself is revealing. If the Flamingo Revolution wants to become a force capable of demanding a technical government—in other words, if it intends to become a political actor—it has to accept the same standard it asks of others: it must tell society clearly who it is, who speaks in its name, and what those people represent.
The experience of East Germany and the Czech Republic after communism offers an important point of comparison, even if the processes followed different paths. Lustration became one of the institutional means through which these societies confronted the question of who had participated in the former repressive apparatus and in what capacity. There is an entire literature about the strange and painful experience of opening one’s own file and discovering oneself as the state once watched, classified, and recorded you. Albania never seriously completed such a reckoning with its past.
And an unresolved past does not simply disappear. It survives in habits, networks, loyalties, silences, sometimes even in the institutions that claim to have broken with it. When the state fails to undertake this work, part of the responsibility inevitably falls to civil society. Today it also falls upon the protest movement itself. If the Flamingo Revolution wants to demand transparency and accountability from a future technical government, it should begin by practicing both within its own ranks.
We have already seen too many alliances between governments, opposition parties, and smaller political formations end in much the same way: clientelist control, informal arrangements, weakened institutions. If this movement wants to avoid becoming simply one more player in the same old game, saying “we are non-partisan” or “we are clean” is not enough. These claims have to be supported by facts that others can verify: Who are we? Where do we come from? What political or institutional commitments have we had? Why, and under what circumstances, did we leave them?
This is why a written self-declaration matters. It moves trust from the private and moral register of besa into the public space, where a claim can be checked by anyone. There is an important difference here. Politics cannot depend indefinitely on our belief that particular people are honourable. Democracy needs forms that allow citizens to verify what they are being asked to trust.
There is something of Václav Havel’s “living within the truth” in this. Not because political actors must present themselves as morally pure—they cannot—but because breaking with a system of opacity also means refusing to reproduce its habits. A movement cannot condemn concealment in those who govern while tolerating it among those who hope to replace them. The principles demanded from power have to become visible, first of all, in one’s own conduct. And if something in our political past is uncomfortable to acknowledge, so be it. The country matters more than our individual pride.
If the movement intends to press for a technical government, sooner or later it will demand full transparency from the technical and political figures proposed to serve in it. That demand loses much of its legitimacy if the founders and leaders of the movement consider themselves exempt. Indeed, conflicts of interest matter most where influence is greatest. Those able to orient the movement are also those best placed to lead it toward—or keep it away from—the same disastrous alliances that have repeatedly damaged the country.
People are tired of being deceived. We should be very honest with them.
None of this means excluding everyone who once belonged to a political party or worked within an institution. That would be both unjust and absurd. People change; political convictions evolve; experience can be valuable. What matters is disclosure: the position held, the period concerned, the nature of the engagement, and the circumstances in which it ended. The question is not whether someone has an immaculate political biography. Few people do. The question is whether that biography can be stated openly.
This distinction matters especially in a country that has paid dearly for political silence. Hannah Arendt’s distinction between factual truth and political opinion is useful here. Citizens do not have to reach the same judgment about somebody’s past. One person may regard a former political engagement as compromising; another may see it as experience, or as an error subsequently corrected. That disagreement belongs to democratic life. But before citizens can judge differently, they must have access to the same facts. Transparency provides the facts; citizens retain the judgment.
There is, of course, a legitimate objection. Standards of transparency can become so rigid that they turn into a witch hunt. They can drive away people with useful experience or erase important distinctions: a political engagement made in youth cannot automatically be treated as morally equivalent to collaboration with a repressive apparatus. I agree. But this is an argument for greater precision, not for silence. Nuance requires more information, not less.
A democracy does not need politically immaculate people. It needs people willing to take responsibility for their own political trajectory.
If the Flamingo Revolution is to become something more than another wave of civic energy that eventually exhausts itself without consequence, transparency has to become part of its foundation, not something added later. This matters especially if the next step is to demand a technical government. We cannot postpone transparency until after power changes hands, just as we cannot postpone accountability until after victory. The kind of political culture we want tomorrow is already being tested in the way we behave today.
Transparency is not the same kind of question as whether Grizhla has black feathers or white ones. It is essential for any public figure who respects both themselves and the people who choose to follow them.
Because the moment people begin to organize political power, accountability must begin too. Otherwise, what looks like political renewal may turn out to be little more than a change of faces inside the same old system.
This is precisely why Albania finds itself where it is today: transparency is treated as though it mattered no more than the colour of a magpie’s feathers.
#Transparency #FlamingoRevolution #TransitionalJustice #Accountability #TechnicalGovernment #CivilSociety #Lustration
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