INSURRECTION/ SP MPs rebel, drag Gjati to vote on territorial division!

 Kliko këtu për të tjera
Voxpress:

The minister Rama is looking for

2026-09-11 12:45:39Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA ALBATROS REXHAJ

The minister Rama is looking for

When I asked Edi Rama why Klodiana Spahiu, the answer came in three words: humble, professional, loyal.

The more I think about the answer, the less these three qualities seem random. They seem like the description of the minister Rama is looking for for this phase of his government. And Health is probably the best place to see if he has found her.

Spahiu comes with an advantage that cannot be bought with a seminar. She knows the hospital inside out. She was a doctor in the ward, she ran the Durrës hospital for a period, and she knows what happens between a decision made in the ministry and the patient waiting in the corridor.

That distance is one of the old diseases of our healthcare system. You have a doctor on paper; you can't find him in the hospital. You have the equipment in the inventory; when you need it, they tell you it's broken and send you across the street to a private doctor. The budget has paid for the medicine; the patient leaves the hospital with the prescription in hand to buy it abroad. Investment, contract, reform, statistics, everything exists, only the service is missing. The Minister of Health is not measured by what the state says it has built. It is measured by what the citizen finds when something hurts.

Therefore, the word “humble” here is not a character embellishment. For this word, I did not settle for the Prime Minister’s assessment; I asked people up and down who know her from the hospital and from the Parliament, and the answer was almost the same everywhere: yes, she is a woman with her feet on the ground. In healthcare, that quality is a way of working. The humble minister does not believe that the system works because the report that has come to her desk says that it works. She goes, sits in the hospital, talks to the doctor, the nurse and the patient, and asks why there is a queue, why the equipment is stuck, why the medicine is missing, why someone from Kukës or Gjirokastra has to come to Tirana for something that they need to get close to home. Not for photos.

Professionalism has just as much practical meaning. Spahiu is a doctor. She doesn't need anyone to explain to her what a delayed examination means, a missing specialist, or a department that only operates on organics. She's seen the other side of the counter, and that makes it harder for the system to cheat her.

But the word that interests me most is the third one.

Not that I want to philosophize about political loyalty. Rama has the right to choose ministers he trusts; every prime minister does. The question is what that trust produces.

Rama is trying to introduce into government an idea he has called BESA and a way of working he has called Loyal Presence. In essence, it is simple: the citizen should not have to deal with a state that talks to itself, but with someone who listens, someone who responds, and someone who does not let go of the problem until it is solved.

I believe Rama when he says he's serious this time. Not out of any particular faith in the word of prime ministers. He simply doesn't need this maneuver. He has power. There's no opposition to take it from him. He doesn't need BESA to survive even a month in office. This doesn't prove his sincerity; a leader with secure power can do both communication and inheritance. But it's the main reason why I'm inclined to believe him, and why I think the initiative comes from another question: now that he has power again, what will he do with it? Not how to win the next elections, but how to make the administration he leads behave differently with the citizen.

If so, Klodiana Spahiu is not just a new Minister of Health. It is one of the first tests of whether that reflection can become a way of governance. And in healthcare, the test is brutally concrete, because the patient does not ask for a building permit or an administrative response. He is afraid, he is in pain, maybe he has a sick child at his side, and the organizational chart does not work for him.

The Faithful Presence in Healthcare is not the Spahiu who shows up every week at a hospital. It is the hospital that works when she is in Tirana: the doctor on duty, the laboratory with reagents, the equipment that does not take you to the private sector as soon as you need it, the medicine that is found where the state says it bought it, and a manager who responds when something fails. That is her test: how much of the difference between healthcare on paper and the healthcare that the patient finds will she manage to close.

It won't be easy. Healthcare is a minefield, and mines have owners. I don't know this just from reports. I've been going in and out of hospitals for years, waiting in the hallways, listening to people, and seeing how the system works when there are no cameras. From those hallways, I've long since formed a belief: pharmaceuticals operate as a parallel budget, with financial relationships that reach all the way to the doctor; import prices are inflated because warehouses make the market; public money is paid for services that the patient doesn't receive; and private owners have more influence over an appointment than a private interest should have over a public system.

Albania needs pharmaceutical companies, it needs private hospitals, it needs the private sector. But the public healthcare system has only one reason to exist, the patient, and when someone else's interest starts to determine what service they receive, the minister must know how to say no.

Here we will understand if Rama has read Spahiu correctly. He has not chosen a figure from outside the system who needs to learn where the doors are. He has chosen a doctor who knows the hospital, a politician with her own weight and a person whom he himself says he trusts. Now it is her turn. She will need humility to listen to the things that subordinates do not like to say to the minister. She will need the profession to understand when they are giving her an explanation and when they are selling her an excuse. The rest is simpler: a problem that has only been conveyed is not a problem solved.

The big condition remains. BESA and Prania Besnike cannot become one of those Albanian wonders that last three days. The first enthusiasm is the easy part: ministers go out into the field, MPs listen, phones turn on, cameras record. The test begins when this is no longer news. After six months, after a year, when the director has realized that the wave is not passing, when the minister knows that it is not enough to say "I passed it on", when the citizen begins to demand answers not because the prime minister has just announced an initiative, but because this is how the state functions.

If Rama is serious, and I believe he is, he must protect this standard from his own people. Especially from his own people. Not by dismissing a minister every time a device breaks down or a director makes a mistake; that would be theater. But when a minister gives up the ghost, when the office becomes more important than the field and the report more important than reality, when the citizen again becomes an annoyance and not the reason for the job, there is nothing left to discuss. Whoever deviates from this standard, leaves. Without political negotiations, without months of justifications, without the automatic protection that the government gives to its people.

Klodiana Spahiu should know this, and every other minister with her. Only then will "loyalty" gain weight: not to the chair, not to the minister, not even to the prime minister, but to what the government has undertaken to give to the citizen.

The citizen will not care how many meetings the minister has had, how many reforms she has introduced or how many kilometers she has traveled. She will know if, when something hurts, the state is there. If Klodiana Spahiu achieves this, Rama has found the minister he is looking for. If the obstacle is the system, Rama must give her the power to break it. If the obstacle is the minister herself, he must look for another.

BESA and the Faithful Presence will not be judged by the way they started. They will be judged by something much simpler: if, this time, they don't finish in three days.


Në përputhje me standarded JTI

100 days

 Read
Lutfi Dervishi / 2026-09-07 17:47:46Point of Views

Video

SHIKO KANALIN NE YOUTUBE
×