Private Force is not the State!

The Citizen’s Body is the first Boundary of the Republic!

By Arian Galdini

A state does not fail only when it does not protect the citizen.

It also fails when it allows someone else to appear as though he has a right over the citizen’s body.

This is where the question of Zvërnec begins.

Not with private property as a principle.

Not with investment as a possibility.

Not with the construction site as a space of work.

Not with private security as a lawful service.

But with the moment when the citizen, still without the full document, the explanation, the map, and the public truth of what is happening in his own country, faces a force that is not the state, yet behaves as though it carries upon itself a shadow of power.

A citizen pulled by the arm is not only a news image.

It is the moment when the Republic is seen precisely where it is absent, between the hand that grabs and the body that should not have been touched.

In a free Republic, no private contract can give anyone the appearance of authority over the citizen’s body.

This is the boundary.

And when this boundary is touched, we no longer have only a property debate.

We no longer have only a conflict between residents and an investor.

We no longer have only a protest, a fence, a construction site, guards, police, a company statement, or a government reaction.

We have the oldest and heaviest question of the state, who has the right to exercise force over the human being?

Because the citizen’s body is the first boundary of the Republic.

Before there is party, project, property, investor, fence, contract, permit, or security company, there is a body that the state has a duty to protect from every hand that does not carry the law upon itself.

Whoever touches that body without clear public authority does not touch only one person.

He touches the order that makes the person free.

Private property is one of the foundations of freedom.

A society that does not protect property does not protect the citizen either.

It does not protect work.

It does not protect inheritance.

It does not protect the family.

It does not protect the person from the crowd, from the state that forgets its own boundary, from politics that treats property as spoils, from arbitrariness that seeks to take the name of justice.

That is why private property must be protected.

Private security, the guarding of a site, the order of a construction area, and the protection of property are normal parts of a free state, so long as they remain within the law and do not assume the appearance of public authority over the citizen.

An investor has the right not to have his property violated.

But none of this gives a security company a mandate over the citizen’s physical dignity.

A security company may protect a site.

It cannot take on the appearance of public authority.

It may prevent damage to property.

It cannot treat the citizen as an excess body to be moved out of the project’s way.

It may notify the State Police.

It cannot itself become the first image of force before the person asking for an explanation.

In a free economy, property is protected by law.

In a captured economy, property is protected by fear.

That is the divide.

And precisely here Zvërnec becomes larger than Zvërnec.

Because if the citizen asks for the file and receives spray, the issue is no longer only property.

It is order.

If the citizen asks for an explanation and faces masked men, the issue is no longer only investment.

It is the state.

If, after a public clash, the Police correct themselves, apologize for an inaccurate report, and suspend the local director, the issue is no longer only an incident on the ground.

It is proof that the truth was not where it should have been from the beginning.

In a Republic, the citizen’s body is not the physical obstacle of a project.

It is the boundary where the project must stop until the state speaks clearly.

Edi Rama may say the land is private.

But precisely because it is private, the state must be more public, more impartial, clearer, and stricter with force.

Private property does not exclude the state.

It requires it.

Because without a public state, private property turns into private power.

Here lies the political responsibility.

Not because the prime minister must be accused of ordering a particular hand to touch a particular citizen.

That requires investigation, proof, concrete responsibility, and a decision by the institutions.

But because, for years in Albania, a philosophy of governance has been built in which the project enters with institutional dignity, while the citizen enters with suspicion.

Investment is presented as the future.

The resident is seen as an obstacle.

The map comes late.

The document comes late.

The explanation comes late.

But the fence comes early.

When the state builds this order, it does not need to order every gesture.

It is enough that it has created the climate in which the gesture seems possible.

Rama does not need to be the owner of the project in order to bear responsibility for it.

It is enough that his governance has changed the rules, the boundaries, the laws, and the public order in such a way that the project enters faster than the truth.

This is heavier than the chronicle of a single day.

Because a prime minister who immediately defends an issue with the word “private” must understand that “private” is not the end of the public question.

It is its beginning.

Private how?

With what history of property?

With what documents?

With what chain of transfer?

With what permits?

With what environmental assessment?

With what transparency?

With what relationship to the protected area?

With what guarantees for the resident, for the citizen, for nature, for the public interest?

With what private security on the ground?

With what state control over force?

A serious state is not afraid of these questions.

A serious investor is not afraid of the document.

A serious government is not afraid of the map.

On the contrary, an honest investment should itself seek the light, because only light protects it from suspicion.

Foreign capital is not the problem.

Large investment is not the problem.

Quality tourism is not the problem.

Private property is not the problem.

The problem begins when capital enters sensitive territory with documents the public does not see in time, when permits seem faster than explanations, when the fence comes before trust, when private security becomes the first face of order, and when the citizen learns the boundary of the project not from the state, but from the hand of a contractor.

This is not a battle against private security.

It is a battle against the privatization of the state’s appearance.

In a normal Republic, private security must never be the first actor to physically face the citizen in a conflict of public sensitivity.

It does not have that weight.

It does not have that mandate.

It does not have that responsibility.

It does not have that democratic control.

It does not have that constitutional burden.

Force, even when necessary, is the last word of the state, that is why it must be the most controlled, the most documented, the most accountable.

Public force is dangerous, and for that reason it is bound by law.

Private force is even more dangerous when it steps out of contract and takes on the appearance of law.

A private guard is not the state.

A security contract is not a public mandate.

A construction site is not territory without a Republic.

And the investor is not authority over the citizen.

It is not enough to arrest a guard.

The chain that made the guard feel more secure than the citizen must be investigated.

In a Republic, private violence against the citizen is not investigated only at the finger that presses the spray or at the arm that pulls the body.

The whole road that brought that hand to the citizen must be investigated, who hired it, who ordered it, who allowed it, who saw it, who remained silent, who gave the inaccurate report, and who benefited from the fear.

Every security employee involved in violence against citizens must be investigated.

The chain of command of the security company must be investigated.

It must be seen who contracted it, what duties were given to it, what protocol it had, who supervised it, and what relationship it had with the State Police on the ground.

If a violation is proven, the license must be suspended, the contracts must be audited, and those responsible must be punished.

There cannot be a security company that receives its power from the market and behaves as though it receives its authority from the state.

If it is proven that security employees used violence against citizens, the punishment cannot be small and administrative.

It must be criminal, professional, and public.

Criminal for the hand that used violence.

Professional for the company that allowed it.

Public for the state that failed to prevent it.

Because private violence upon the citizen is not a disciplinary breach.

It is a wound in the authority of the Republic.

The role of the State Police must be investigated.

Not only the police officer who was there.

Not only the director who reported inaccurately.

But the institutional order that allowed the citizen to appear suspicious faster than the project.

In every conflict of property, protest, construction site, or project of public interest, one clear rule must be established, private force can never be the first body that touches the citizen.

If there is risk to property, the state is called.

If there is conflict, the law intervenes.

If there are claims, the file is opened.

If there is violence, it is investigated immediately.

But the Republic cannot hand over its appearance to people contracted to protect a project.

Equally necessary is full transparency of the documents that led to the clash.

The public must see the permits, the maps, the environmental assessment, the property numbers, the chain of ownership, the ultimate beneficiaries, the security contracts, the authorizations for fencing, the role of the institutions, the reasoning behind every change in the status of the area, and every document that makes lawful the passage from the shared nature of the place to the private project.

If everything is clean, light does not harm it.

If everything is lawful, publication does not bring it down.

If everything is just, the citizen is not an enemy.

The citizen who asks for documents is not a saboteur.

The resident who asks for an explanation is not an obstacle.

Civil society that asks for transparency is not against development.

A country does not develop by treating the question as a threat.

A serious investor does not ask for a frightened citizen.

He asks for a credible state.

Because fear does not protect investment.

Fear stains it.

It makes it look like occupation even when it could have been development.

It ties the project to violence even when it could have been tied to work.

It makes capital look like privilege even when it could have been opportunity.

It turns a resort into evidence of the crisis of the state.

In a free country, the market needs law.

In a just country, property needs the state.

In a country that wants to develop without losing itself, investment needs transparency.

That is why Zvërnec must not be read as a simple conflict between development and protest.

That is the lowest reading.

Nor is it a battle against capital, as part of the left would like it to be.

Nor is it a justification for declaring every investor an enemy.

Nor is it an occasion for cheap patriotism over the coastline.

Zvërnec is a test of the boundary.

Where does private property end and public order begin?

Where does investment end and the common interest begin?

Where does the security of a site end and violence against the citizen begin?

Where does “private” end and the Republic begin?

If these boundaries are erased, everyone loses.

The citizen loses, because he no longer knows whether he faces the law or someone’s contract.

Property loses, because the right of property is discredited when it appears beside fear.

The serious investor loses, because every honest capital is placed in the same shadow as unclear capital.

The market loses, because economic freedom cannot live when the citizen thinks that great money has a stronger body than the state.

The state loses, because the monopoly of force is not a privilege of the government, it is the citizen’s guarantee that the strong will not touch him with a private hand.

And the Republic loses, because the Republic begins where the human being is no longer defenseless before the strong.

In Zvërnec, it was not only a tourism project that was tested.

What was tested was whether Albania still keeps the boundary between private property and public force.

What was tested was whether the state is the guardian of the citizen or the guard of the project.

What was tested was whether the word “private” is used to protect freedom or to close the question.

The answer cannot be the fence, the spray, the private hand, the inaccurate report, or the quick declaration that everything is private and therefore everything must fall silent.

The answer must be the file, the map, the law, the investigation, the punishment of every act of violence, the suspension of every practice that gives private security the appearance of the state, and the return of the citizen to the place that belongs to him: not as an obstacle to development, but as the reason development must be just.

In Zvërnec, what is being asked is not that Albania should not develop.

What is being asked is that Albania not develop by ceasing to recognize itself.

The land may be private, but the truth about the land is public.

The investment may be large, but the Republic is larger.

And when the citizen asks to see the file, the state has no right to show him the fence, the private hand, and the spray.

It has the duty to show him the truth.

A country in which the private guard seems more secure than the citizen is not a developed country.

It is a country where development has begun to take the form of fear.

And in a Republic, no contract raises its hand over the citizen.

Arian Galdini