In my previous life, I was an artist. I still paint. I love art. I love the joy that color can give to our lives and to our communities, and I try to bring something of the artist in me in my politics, and I see part of my job today, the reason for being here, not just to campaign for my party, but for politics, and the role it can play for the better in our lives.
U prethodnom životu bio sam umetnik. Još uvek slikam. Volim umetnost. Volim radost koju boja može da donese našim životima i našim zajednicama, i pokušavam da uključim umetnika u meni u moju politiku, i vidim kao deo mog posla danas, kao razlog da budem ovde, ne samo kampanju za moju partiju, već za politiku i ulogu koju ona može da igra u poboljšanju naših života.
For 11 years, I was mayor of Tirana, our capital. We faced many challenges. Art was part of the answer, and my name, in the very beginning, was linked with two things: demolition of illegal constructions in order to get public space back, and use of colors in order to revive the hope that had been lost in my city. But this use of colors was not just an artistic act. Rather, it was a form of political action in a context when the city budget I had available after being elected amounted to zero comma something.
11 godina sam bio gradonačelnik Tirane, našeg glavnog grada. Součavali smo se sa mnogim izazovima. Umetnost je bila deo odgovora. I moje ime, na samom početku, povezivano je sa dvema stvarima: rušenjem ilegalnih konstrukcija da bi se povratio javni prostor i upotrebom boja da bi se probudila nada koja je bila izgubljena u mom gradu. Upotreba boja nije bila samo umetnički čin. Bila je to više forma političke akcije u kontekstu gde je gradski budžet koji mi je bio dostupan kada sam bio izabran iznosio nula zarez nešto.
When we painted the first building, by splashing a radiant orange on the somber gray of a facade, something unimaginable happened. There was a traffic jam and a crowd of people gathered as if it were the location of some spectacular accident, or the sudden sighting of a visiting pop star.
Kada smo okrečili prvu zgradu, stavljajući drečavu narandžastu preko tmurne sive boje fasade, nešto nezamislivo se dogodilo. Nastala je gužva u saobraćaju i gomila ljudi se okupila kao da se tu dogodila neka spektakularna nezgoda ili iznenadna poseta pop zvezde.
The French E.U. official in charge of the funding rushed to block the painting. He screeched that he would block the financing.
Francuski predstavnik Evropske unije koji je upravljao finansiranjem, požurio je da zaustavi krečenje. Počeo je da viče da će blokirati finansiranje.
"But why?" I asked him.
"Ali zašto?", pitao sam ga.
"Because the colors you have ordered do not meet European standards," he replied.
"Zato što boje koje ste naručili ne odgovaraju evropskim standardima", odgovorio je.
"Well," I told him, "the surroundings do not meet European standards, even though this is not what we want, but we will choose the colors ourselves, because this is exactly what we want. And if you do not let us continue with our work, I will hold a press conference here, right now, right in this road, and we will tell people that you look to me just like the censors of the socialist realism era."
"Pa", rekao sam mu, "okruženje ne odgovara evropskim standardima, iako to nije ono što želimo, ali sami ćemo da biramo boje jer je to tačno ono što želimo. I ako nas ne pustite da nastavimo sa radom, održaću konferenciju za novinare ovde, sada, baš na ovom putu i reći ćemo ljudima da gledate na mene baš kao cenzori ere socrealizma."
Then he was kind of troubled, and asked me for a compromise. But I told him no, I'm sorry, compromise in colors is gray, and we have enough gray to last us a lifetime. (Applause) So it's time for change.
To ga je malo zabrinulo i zatražio je kompromis. Rekao sam mu: "Ne, žao mi je, kompromis među bojama je siva, a mi imamo dovoljno sive za ceo život." (Aplauz) Vreme je za promene.
The rehabilitation of public spaces revived the feeling of belonging to a city that people lost. The pride of people about their own place of living, and there were feelings that had been buried deep for years under the fury of the illegal, barbaric constructions that sprang up in the public space. And when colors came out everywhere, a mood of change started transforming the spirit of people. Big noise raised up: "What is this? What is happening? What are colors doing to us?"
Rehabilitacija javnih prostora je oživela osećaj pripadnosti gradu koji su ljudi izgubili. Ponos ljudi vezan za mesto gde žive i osećanja koja su bila zakopana godinama duboko ispod besa zbog ilegalnih, varvarskih konstrukcija koje su nikle na javnom prostoru. Kada su se boje pojavile svuda, duh promene počeo je da transformiše duh ljudi. Digla se galama: "Šta je ovo? Šta se dešava? Šta nam rade boje?"
And we made a poll, the most fascinating poll I've seen in my life. We asked people, "Do you want this action, and to have buildings painted like that?" And then the second question was, "Do you want it to stop or do you want it to continue?" To the first question, 63 percent of people said yes, we like it. Thirty-seven said no, we don't like it. But to the second question, half of them that didn't like it, they wanted it to continue. (Laughter)
I organizovali smo glasanje, najfascinantnije glasanje koje sam video u životu. Pitali smo ljude: "Da li želite ovu akciju i da zgrade budu ovako okrečene?" Drugo pitanje bilo je: "Da li želite da se zaustavi ili da se nastavi?" Na prvo pitanje, 63 posto ljudi odgovorilo je: "Da, sviđa nam se." Trideset sedam odgovorilo je: "Ne, ne sviđa nam se." Ali na drugo pitanje, polovina onih kojima se nije sviđala, želela je da se nastavi. (Smeh)
So we noticed change. People started to drop less litter in the streets, for example, started to pay taxes, started to feel something they had forgotten, and beauty was acting as a guardsman where municipal police, or the state itself, were missing.
Primetili smo promenu. Ljudi su počeli da bacaju manje smeća na ulice, na primer, počeli su da plaćaju poreze, počeli su da osećaju ono što su zaboravili. I lepota je služila kao čuvar gde gradska policija i sama država, nisu bili prisutni.
One day I remember walking along a street that had just been colored, and where we were in the process of planting trees, when I saw a shopkeeper and his wife putting a glass facade to their shop. They had thrown the old shutter in the garbage collection place.
Sećam se da sam jednog dana šetao ulicom koja samo što je bila okrečena i gde je trajao proces sadnje drveća, kada sam video vlasnika radnje i njegovu ženu kako stavljaju staklenu fasadu na njihovu radnju. Bacili su stari kapak na mesto gde se sakuplja smeće.
"Why did you throw away the shutters?" I asked him.
"Zašto ste bacili kapke?", pitao sam ih.
"Well, because the street is safer now," they answered.
"Pa, zato što je ulica sada bezbednija", odgovorili su.
"Safer? Why? They have posted more policemen here?"
"Bezbednija? Zašto? Postavili su više policajaca ovde?"
"Come on, man! What policemen? You can see it for yourself. There are colors, streetlights, new pavement with no potholes, trees. So it's beautiful; it's safe."
"Ma daj, čoveče! Kakve policajce? Možeš i sam da vidiš. Tu su boje, ulične sijalice, novi trotoar bez rupa, drveće. Prelepo je; bezbedno je."
And indeed, it was beauty that was giving people this feeling of being protected. And this was not a misplaced feeling. Crime did fall.
I stvarno, lepota je davala ljudima osećaj zaštite. To nije bio pogrešan osećaj. Kriminal je zaista oslabio.
The freedom that was won in 1990 brought about a state of anarchy in the city, while the barbarism of the '90s brought about a loss of hope for the city. The paint on the walls did not feed children, nor did it tend the sick or educate the ignorant, but it gave hope and light, and helped to make people see there could be a different way of doing things, a different spirit, a different feel to our lives, and that if we brought the same energy and hope to our politics, we could build a better life for each other and for our country. We removed 123,000 tons of concrete only from the riverbanks. We demolished more than 5,000 illegal buildings all over the city, up to eight stories high, the tallest of them. We planted 55,000 trees and bushes in the streets. We established a green tax, and then everybody accepted it and all businessmen paid it regularly. By means of open competitions, we managed to recruit in our administration many young people, and we thus managed to build a de-politicized public institution where men and women were equally represented.
Sloboda osvojena 1990, donela je stanje anarhije u grad, dok je varvarizam '90-ih doneo gubitak nade za grad. Boja na zidovima nije hranila decu, takođe nije brinula o bolesnima ili obrazovala neuke, ali je davala nadu i svetlo i pomogla ljudima da vide da postoji drugačiji način da se stvari urade, drugačiji duh, drugačiji pogled na naše živote. I da, ako unesemo istu energiju i nadu u našu politiku, možemo da stvorimo bolji život jedni za druge i za našu zemlju. Uklonili smo 123 000 tona betona samo sa rečnih obala. Srušili smo više od 5 000 ilegalnih građevina u celom gradu, najviše od njih imale su i do osam spratova. Zasadili smo 55 000 stabala i žbunova u ulicama. Uveli smo ekološki porez i onda su ga svi prihvatili i svi poslovni ljudi su ga redovno plaćali. Kroz otvorena takmičenja uspeli samo da u našu administraciju regrutujemo mnogo mladih ljudi i tako smo uspeli da izgradimo apolitičnu javnu instituciju gde su muškarci i žene jednako predstavljeni.
International organizations have invested a lot in Albania during these 20 years, not all of it well spent. When I told the World Bank directors that I wanted them to finance a project to build a model reception hall for citizens precisely in order to fight endemic daily corruption, they did not understand me. But people were waiting in long queues under sun and under rain in order to get a certificate or just a simple answer from two tiny windows of two metal kiosks. They were paying in order to skip the queue, the long queue. The reply to their requests was met by a voice coming from this dark hole, and, on the other hand, a mysterious hand coming out to take their documents while searching through old documents for the bribe. We could change the invisible clerks within the kiosks, every week, but we could not change this corrupt practice.
Internacionalne organizacije uložile su mnogo u Albaniju u poslednjih 20 godina, od čega nije sve potrošeno na dobar način. Kada sam rekao direktorima Svetske banke da želim da finansiraju projekat da se izgradi model sale za prijem građana baš u cilju borbe protiv endemske dnevne korupcije, nisu me razumeli. Ali ljudi su čekali u dugim redovima pod suncem i kišom da bi dobili sertifikat ili samo jednostavam odgovor kroz dva mala prozora na dva metalna kioska. Plaćali su da ne bi čekali u redu, u dugom redu. Na njihove zahteve odgovarao je glas koji je dolazio iz mračne rupe i sa druge strane, misteriozna ruka koja se pojavi da uzme njihove dokumente dok među starim dokumentima traži mito. Mogli smo da menjamo nevidljive službenike u kioscima svake nedelje, ali nismo mogli da promenimo ovu korumpiranu praksu.
"I'm convinced," I told a German official with the World Bank, "that it would be impossible for them to be bribed if they worked in Germany, in a German administration, just as I am convinced that if you put German officials from the German administration in those holes, they would be bribed just the same."
"Ubeđen sam", rekao sam nemačkom zvaničniku Svetske banke, "da bi bilo nemoguće da primaju mito kada bi radili u Nemačkoj, u nemačkoj administraciji, u istoj meri koliko sam ubeđen da, ako bi postavili nemačke zvaničnike iz nemačke administracije u ove rupe, takođe bi primali mito."
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
It's not about genes. It's not about some being with a high conscience and some others having not a conscience. It's about system, it's about organization. It's also about environment and respect.
To nema veze sa genima. To ne znači da neko ima savest na višem nivou, a da neko drugi nema savest. To ima veze sa sistemom, sa organizacijom. Takođe je vezano za okolinu i poštovanje.
We removed the kiosks. We built the bright new reception hall that made people, Tirana citizens, think they had traveled abroad when they entered to make their requests. We created an online system of control and so speeded up all the processes. We put the citizen first, and not the clerks.
Uklonili smo kioske. Sagradili smo novu salu za prijeme zbog koje su ljudi, građani Tirane, mislili da su otputovali u inostranstvo kada bi ušli da predaju svoje zahteve. Napravili smo onlajn sistem kontrole i tako ubrzali sve procese. Stavili smo građane na prvo mesto, a ne službenike.
The corruption in the state administration of countries like Albania -- it's not up to me to say also like Greece -- can be fought only by modernization. Reinventing the government by reinventing politics itself is the answer, and not reinventing people based on a ready-made formula that the developed world often tries in vain to impose to people like us. (Applause)
Protiv korupcije u državnoj administraciji u zemljama kao što je Albanija - da ne kažem, kao što je Grčka - možemo se boriti samo modernizacijom. Rešenje je reorganizovanje vlade kroz reorganizovanje same politike, a ne reorganizovanje ljudi na osnovu već smišljenih obrazaca koje razvijeni svet često uzalud pokušava da nametne ljudima kao što smo mi. (Aplauz)
Things have come to this point because politicians in general, but especially in our countries, let's face it, think people are stupid. They take it for granted that, come what may, people have to follow them, while politics, more and more, fails to offer answers for their public concerns or the exigencies of the common people. Politics has come to resemble a cynical team game played by politicians, while the public has been pushed aside as if sitting on the seats of a stadium in which passion for politics is gradually making room for blindness and desperation. Seen from those stairs, all politicians today seem the same, and politics has come to resemble a sport that inspires more aggressiveness and pessimism than social cohesion and the desire for civic protaganism.
Stvari su dostigle ovu tačku zato što političari u globalu, ali naročito u našim zemljama, da se ne lažemo, misle da su ljudi glupi. Uzimaju zdravo za gotovo da će, bilo šta da se desi, ljudi morati da ih prate, dok politika, sve više i više, ne uspeva da ponudi rešenja za brige javnosti ili potrebe običnih ljudi. Politika je počela da liči na ciničnu timsku igru koju igraju političari, dok je javnost gurnuta u stranu kao da sede na sedištima na stadionu gde strast ka politici postepeno ustupa mesto zaslepljenosti i očaju. Gledano sa tih stepenica, svi političari danas izgledaju isto i politika je počela da liči na sport koji stvara više agresivnosti i pesimizma nego društvene jedinstvenosti i želje za građanskim protagonizmom.
Barack Obama won — (Applause) — because he mobilized people as never before through the use of social networks. He did not know each and every one of them, but with an admirable ingenuity, he managed to transform them into activists by giving them all the possibility to hold in their hands the arguments and the instruments that each would need to campaign in his name by making his own campaign. I tweet. I love it. I love it because it lets me get the message out, but it also lets people get their messages to me. This is politics, not from top down, but from the bottom up, and sideways, and allowing everybody's voice to be heard is exactly what we need. Politics is not just about leaders. It's not just about politicians and laws. It is about how people think, how they view the world around them, how they use their time and their energy. When people say all politicians are the same, ask yourself if Obama was the same as Bush, if François Hollande is the same as Sarkozy. They are not. They are human beings with different views and different visions for the world. When people say nothing can change, just stop and think what the world was like 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago. Our world is defined by the pace of change. We can all change the world.
Barak Obama je pobedio - (Aplauz) - jer je mobilizovao ljude kao nikada pre kroz upotrebu socijalnih mreža. Nije poznavao svakog od njih, ali je sa zadivljujućom genijalnošću uspeo da ih transformiše u aktiviste dozvoljavajući im da u svojim rukama drže argumente i instrumente koji su svakom od njih bili potrebni da vode kampanju u njegovo ime stvarajući sopstvenu kampanju. Tvitujem. Obožavam to. Obožavam to jer mi pruža priliku da prenesem poruku, ali takođe omogućava ljudima da prenesu svoje poruke meni. Ovo je politika, ne od vrha na dole, već odozdo na gore i sa strane. Mogućnost da se svačiji glas čuje je upravo ono što nam je potrebno. Politika nije vezana samo za vođe. Ne radi se samo o političarima i zakonima. Radi se o tome kako ljudi razmišljaju, kako vide svet oko sebe, kako koriste svoje vreme i energiju. Kada ljudi kažu da su svi političari isti, zapitajte se da li je Obama isti kao Buš, da li je Fransoa Holand isti kao Sarkozi. Nisu isti. Oni su ljudska bića sa različitim shvatanjima i različitim vizijama o svetu. Kada ljudi kažu da ništa ne može da se promeni, samo stanite i razmislite kako je svet izgledao pre 10, 20, 50, 100 godina. Naš svet je definisan tempom promene. Svi mi možemo da promenimo svet.
I gave you a very small example of how one thing, the use of color, can make change happen. I want to make more change as Prime Minister of my country, but every single one of you can make change happen if you want to.
Dao sam samo mali primer kako jedna stvar, upotreba boje, može da pokrene promenu. Želim da donesem još više promena kao premijer svoje zemlje, ali bilo ko od vas može da donese promene ako želi.
President Roosevelt, he said, "Believe you can, and you are halfway there."
Predsednik Ruzvelt je rekao: "Veruj da možeš i prešao si već pola puta."
Efharisto and kalinihta.
Efharisto i kalininhta. (Hvala i laku noć).
(Applause)
(Aplauz)