When New York Stock Exchange bankruptcy rocked the global economy and the Great Depression swept the world, Paul Lendvai was only two months old. Now he is 97-year-old and still active, as author of books and columnist of the Austrian newspaper HINADer Standard).
He is the true witness of the century. In the 1980s it was among the few Western journalists allowed to visit Albania.
At that time, he prepared several television stories for Albania and wrote the book Single Albania.
Report from the Albanian country. Landvai, born into a Jewish family in Budapest, survived Holocustin thanks to a Swiss defense passport that had been released by a Swiss diplomat in Budapest.
29 members of Lendvai’s family were executed by the Nazis. Communism followed after the Nazi dictatorship. In 1957, a year after the oppression of the Hungarian Peoples of the Soviets, Lendvai fled to Austria.
He worked as a correspondent for the renowned British newspaper Independent Times and wrote to Swiss newspapers about developments behind the Iron curtain.
And for 44 years he directed the legendary Austrian television show from 1980 to 2024. O RF, Ostststudio (later Europetudio).
He has also invited Albanian political personalities to this show several times. Although in an advanced age, Lendvai devotes his newest column to dramatic developments in Albania.
He writes that at almost the same time as mass demonstrations in France, from the Albanian capital, Tirana, and other urban centres reported protests against government policy.
Just as four months ago, not only did students go out on the street seeking the resignation of the government led by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Landvai highlights that the world was a protest against a tourist project in a protected area in the south of the country. Following the project is Jared Kouchner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, broadcasting Telegrafi.
For the project estimated at 1.4 billion euros, Kouchner received the coveted status of the strategic investor, with the prospect of accelerating permits by the Ministry of Tourism.
In contrast to France, the political situation is not marked by the division between the extreme right and the extreme left, but by the almost absolute power of the Rama government, writes Lendvai.
Rama, who has ruled for 13 years, is a special case in European politics. The talented painter is not only maintaining excellent relations with international galleries; he is also considered the favorite of culture editors, always willing, easily dressed, to be self-intensed in interviews such as the Rypolitan-artist.
He became internationally known as mayor of Tirana. Meanwhile, according to Lendvai, the prosperity of construction under the rule of Albania by Rama gave a powerful impetus to deeply entrenched corruption.
For the clientilism system set up by Rama over the long years, the famous saying of the philosopher Lord Acton (1834)1902): State corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. )
The day – to – day demonstrations are directed against the government not only against the poor conditions of the study but also against the sweeping nepotism associated with Rama’s name.
Instead of dealing with the causes of violent demonstrations, Rama leaves police who brutally strike water dumps and tear gas, Lendvai criticises.
In his public presentations, Rama accused foreign officials who wanted to prevent Albania’s EU membership from staying behind demonstrations, offering no evidence of that.
This, according to him, is about the same hand that has burned and destroyed Albania more than once.
Copying this rhetoric of lies used by authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, as well as the arrest of hundreds, 62-year-old Rama has influenced his mask to fall and thus seems to have permanently destroyed his highly cultivated image of the apartside (Despite red socks in costume), Lendvai concludes in his columnist./Telegraphy/