Lajme flash
Protest as the new source of political legitimacy
Nga Red Varaku
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Nga Ardi Stefa
Protest as the new source of political legitimacy
2026-08-02 11:33:41 / IDE
By Red Varaku
The crisis Albania is facing today is not simply a crisis of representation produced by the collapse of trust in the political establishment. The real crisis is the great battle that is taking place between an establishment that is politically dead, that can no longer produce consensus, and a MOVEMENT that has just been born, but is gaining more and more the status of an alternative authority in the public consciousness every day.
For this reason, such a crisis is not resolved simply by overthrowing a government, nor by holding elections, nor by replacing certain political figures. It is resolved only when a new source of legitimacy emerges, capable of representing a significant part of society and giving it a new political direction.
This is precisely where the importance of the protest lies.
The biggest mistake the establishment is making is treating it as a spontaneous reaction or a transient civic mobilization. If it were just that, it would be just an episode. But when a protest manages to build a shared identity, a new political language, and a new system of symbols, it not only ceases to be a mere episodic event, but it begins to function as the embryo of a new political order.
This is why the government's response is ruthless and does not focus only on organizing the protest, but mainly on destroying its legitimacy. Any attempt to label it, delegitimize it, or simply reduce it to a manipulated minority stems from the fear that the protest may precisely acquire the status of a legitimate alternative authority in the public consciousness.
In fact, this is the clearest indicator that the first phase of the crisis is over. Because the moment a protest manages to produce an alternative authority in the public consciousness, it is not simply an episodic event but has become a MOVEMENT that has already entered our political scene.
This certainly does not mean that the old order has fallen, because institutions continue to function and power continues to govern. But political history teaches us that worn-out orders do not collapse the day they formally lose power. They begin to fall the day they lose their monopoly on society's political imagination.
Because a protest that does not simply demand the change of a decision, but proposes a different way of political organization, is not only no longer simply an opposition in the traditional sense, but it has become a founding process.
This is because it has begun to produce a new source of political legitimacy.
In this sense, protest is no longer, as we have said, a symptom of the crisis, because it has now become the only mechanism through which the crisis can be resolved.
Because a legitimacy crisis doesn't end when the old order becomes stronger. It ends when society finds a new point of reference that manages to represent its dreams and aspirations.
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