Private Property requires a Public State!

By Arian Galdini

When a private hand touches the citizen before the law has spoken clearly, the conflict is no longer only about property.

It is about the Republic.

This is where the gravest question of Zvërnec begins.

Not with the protest as an image.

Not with the project as a promise.

Not with the investor as a name.

Not with private property as a problem.

But with the moment when the citizen, before receiving a full explanation from the state, faces a force that does not carry the public authority of the law.

In a free country, private property must be protected.

But private force cannot become the state.

Property is a foundation of freedom.

It protects the person from arbitrariness, from the crowd, from politics, from seizure, from the state that would treat life as its own property.

Protest does not stand above the law.

Property does not stand above public dignity.

The investor is not guilty because he invests.

Private security may guard a space.

But none of these gives the private hand the right to assume the appearance of the state over the body of the citizen.

Here is the boundary.

A private guard protects a contracted space.

The state protects the common order.

The guard has a duty of service.

The state has public responsibility.

The guard may protect the site within the law.

The state guarantees that neither the owner, nor the protester, nor the investor, nor the resident, nor the police officer, nor the guard rises above the law.

When these roles are confused, the citizen no longer knows before whom he stands: the law or an interest.

The images and reports from Zvërnec, where clashes with private guards were mentioned, along with the use of spray, people being taken to police stations, investigations into security employees, and a later police correction after an initial inaccurate report, must not be treated as details of a tense protest.

They raised the issue to another level, who has the right to touch the citizen in the name of order?

Force is the last word of the state.

That is why it must be the most controlled.

The state does not possess force in order to be frightening.

It possesses force so that the strong do not become more frightening than the law.

Public force is not sacred because the state holds it, it becomes lawful only when it submits to the law.

When used without measure, it becomes violence.

When allowed to take on a private face, it becomes a threat to the very order it is meant to protect.

The public 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.

This is why private property requires a public state.

Not a state hostile to property.

Not a state afraid of investment.

Not a state that surrenders order to noise.

But an impartial, visible, accountable state that protects property without humiliating the citizen, and protects the citizen without violating property.

Without this measure, private property may take on the appearance of a small power.

Without this measure, the construction site may seem faster than the law.

Without this measure, the citizen learns that when the project becomes large, the state becomes distant.

In today’s model of governance, the project often receives institutional dignity faster than the citizen receives explanation.

This is where inequality begins.

The investor arrives with strategic language.

The resident arrives with doubt.

The project arrives with promise.

The citizen arrives with questions.

The state appears quickly to ease the project and late to clarify matters for the person.

When the clash occurs, the citizen must not meet the body of force before he meets the face of justice.

If that happens, the problem is no longer communication.

It is order.

A government that calls every objection “fear of development” fails to understand that development is not measured only by the money it brings, but by the person it does not humiliate.

A project that needs guards more visible than explanation, spray faster than responsibility, private force more present than public authority, is not yet mature development.

It is power seeking passage.

And the state cannot be the escort of power.

It must be its limit.

When the citizen asks for right and receives force, the issue is no longer only property.

It is the state.

It is the question of whether, on Albanian territory, public law decides or the order of whoever has more force on the ground.

It is the difference between private property and a private state.

It is the point where a Republic understands that the freedom of the owner cannot be built upon the insecurity of the citizen.

A private guard cannot be the first face of order.

He cannot be faster than explanation.

He cannot be more certain than the state in touching the body of the citizen.

He cannot teach the citizen where property ends and obedience begins.

Private security is lawful when it protects a space within the law.

It becomes an alarm when it seems to replace the law.

It must be clarified who held the force, who ordered it, who controlled it, who used it, and who was held accountable.

Not for revenge.

To prove that force in this country has a legal master, not a private patron.

This weighs more than any calming statement.

If a private company crossed the line, it must answer.

If the police issued an inaccurate report, it must answer.

If a protester broke the law, he must answer.

If the property is private, it must be protected.

If the resident has a claim, he must be heard.

If the investor is within his rights, he must prove it through clear law.

If the state says everything is in order, the public truth must be stronger than every image of force.

Order is not kept through darkness.

It is kept through accountability.

Private property does not require a state that bows.

It requires a state that is just.

Serious investment does not require a frightened citizen.

It requires an informed citizen.

The law does not require private forces that look like little sovereigns.

It requires boundaries no one can replace.

Zvërnec must not be read only as a clash between protesters and guards.

At a deeper level, it revealed what happens when a conflict that should have been resolved through documents, hearings, courts, and an impartial state reaches the body of the citizen.

Where public speech should have been, force appears.

Where the state should have been, the citizen first sees privately guarded interest.

This must not be normalized.

A country that grows used to this image does not lose only a property conflict.

It loses its republican measure.

Tomorrow, the same order may appear on a mountain, in a forest, in a lagoon, in a village, on a beach, wherever the citizen has less power than the project and the state appears too late to be an arbiter.

Precisely because property is private, the state must be public.

More public than ever.

Clearer than ever.

More impartial than ever.

Harsher than ever with every force that steps outside its boundary.

Because private property is not protected by making the citizen feel stateless.

It is protected by making the state so just that the citizen, the owner, and the investor all know that no one carries more force than the law.

In a Republic, the citizen must not learn the boundary of property from a private hand.

He must learn it from the law.

A country may accept large capital.

It may build resorts.

It may develop the coastline.

But it cannot accept that the citizen meet private force before he meets his own state.

Where this happens, the problem is no longer only the project.

The problem is the Republic.

If the state does not protect the citizen before private force, tomorrow it will not be able to protect private property before the stronger predator.

Because property, the market, and investment do not live from the weakness of the state.

They live from its justice.

Arian Galdini