"Top Story", Nano to run for President

Fatos Nano admitted in an interview for “Top Story” his ambition for becoming the next Albanian President. 

Which are the possible scenarios? Which is his current position in the Albanian politics, the platform it has and the chances to be reelected? Which is the relation between Nano and the main political figures, Berisha, Rama and Meta, and the forces they represent?

But above all, why should the former Prime Minister, the man who speaks through his silence since 2009, be elected as the next President?

When Top Channel’s journalist Sokol Balla welcomed him and declared that he had been speaking through his silence, Nano declared:

“I believe that there is always a time to speak. It is very useful to have a time to listen or to speak through silence. We all need reflection, we need to think before feeding conflicts with exaggerated emotions”.

Sokol Balla – Regardless the contestations created by your political actions during the years, it is a fact that your result has always been positive, since the elections of 2005, which were the only ones that were not rejected, and you lost. You gave stability to the country with the President in 2007, although you made enemies among your people. Will you be a candidate for the next President?


Fatos Nano – It seems like we are entering a topic, but this is a way for getting out of this topic. I am not a candidate, but I am the most important candidate for Albania in 2012, because Albania is a candidate and it is very important to receive the deserved and delayed EU candidate status. Allow me to say that as a politician and citizen, I offered my experience and ability to help changing the current political climate, so that the relations between politics and institutions can be more progressive and encouraging for their duties towards the citizens. I offered myself by contacting all parties, and I made it clear that I am ready to compete in this race. This is only the beginning, and I am here to declare through your program the concept, the spirit and the vision for which I make this offer, and the products that it will secure.

Sokol Balla – However, based on the Constitution, your candidacy must come from a political party. What will you try differently from 2007, when you were self declared a candidate?

Fatos Nano -  It is useful and it often lack in the Albanian politics: the space for dialogue, negotiation, based on which all parties can see each other, can come to know the personalities that are offered, and all of them are available to be elected for important functions, which demand a good understanding of politics. As regards the traditional vision of these elections, the campaigns, since the public knows me, I have preferred to negotiate and present to the political factors my concent and vision, creating a process that will serve to the country and not to me. A process that helps reestablishing trust between politics and institutions, which has been broken in many critical moments, and have ruined not only the symbolical ambience of the 100th year of independence for our country, and especially on the verge of important Euro-Atlantic evaluation meetings with the countries that follow our progress closely.