Albanian follows in Tunisia's footsteps

On Friday three demonstrators were killed and hundreds of police officers and civilians left injured at a mass rally by the opposition Socialists in Tirana. The Albanian Prime Minister subsequently reacted by accusing the opposition of having tried to organise a coup like "that in Tunisia". The parallel is unintentionally very fitting, the business paper Il Sole 24 Ore writes: "Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has fled. A peaceful revolution toppled him from power. Sali Besha is still in the saddle but he is facing a second revolt after the one in 1997 which removed him from office and left an enormous financial gap as well as 2,000 dead in its wake. The corrupt regimes of the Mediterranean are collapsing. Systems which have ransacked entire nations. As partners in trade we, too, will pay the price for the dissolution of these regimes – and it has only just begun – in both economic and social terms. ... Was the revolt of 1997 a lesson to us? Apparently not, nor for those of us Europeans who are incapable of keeping those nations that border on an increasingly stormy Mediterranean safe from ruin."

» more information (external link, Italian)
More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Unrest / Riots, » Albania, » Tunisia
All available articles from » Alberto Negri

» To the complete press review of Monday, January 24, 2011