The poison paradox: when we tolerate theft and wonder at the ruin

In the cafés of Tirana, at afternoon meetings in Durrës, around family tables and in the everyday conversations of ordinary people, one sentence is heard all the time. It is said with a kind of feigned maturity, in the tone of someone who claims to know the world to the bone: “Look, corruption I understand. Everyone steals everywhere. But I don't understand why this country doesn't develop, why we never get a proper state.”

This is, without any doubt, one of the most self-destructive and deeply contradictory phrases our collective mindset has ever produced.

Inside this sentence hides a tragic naivety, disguised as pragmatic cynicism. It springs from the illusion that corruption is simply a parallel tax, an invisible percentage that those in power take for their own pockets, while the rest of the money can calmly go on its way to build hospitals, schools, roads and a modern economy. People talk about theft as if it were an innocent habit of human nature, and then they sincerely wonder why the edifice of the state is collapsing on their heads.

Let me say this with all the clarity the truth deserves. You cannot pour poison into the village well every day and then gather with the neighbours to wonder why the water is making your children sick.

Corruption is not an extra cost on the bill; corruption is the destruction of the very foundations of the accounts.

When power is corrupt, the smallest damage is the sum of money transferred to secret accounts abroad. The real damage, the kind that kills development for generations, is the complete distortion of reality.

In a corrupt system, the road is not built where the economy and the farmer need it; it is built where the oligarch has bought cheap land. The hospital is not equipped with the machines that save lives, but with those that guarantee the highest kickback in the tender. The school is not run by the passionate teacher, but by the party militant who paid for the job. And the honest business, the one that pays every tax and respects every employee, goes bankrupt, because it cannot compete with the ghost company that has ties to the minister.

How can you expect development from an organism in which every cell feeds on injustice?

A nation's development is not a magic miracle that falls from the sky. It does not come from luck, nor from good weather. Development is the inevitable result of three fundamental elements: clear rules of the game, free competition on merit, and the belief that the law protects everyone's effort.

The second you say “corruption I understand”, you have agreed to destroy all three of these foundations.

You have agreed that the rules be made of plasticine for the strong and of iron for the weak. You have agreed that talent be defeated by servility. You have agreed that the sweat of your brow be worth nothing against the power of the envelope. And having accepted all this with a shrug of the shoulders, you turn to the screen and ask out loud: Why can't we become like Germany? Why can't we have a state?

This contradiction also feeds another dangerous myth: the hope in “the thief who gets things done”.

For years, Albanian citizens have been sold the idea that it does not matter if a leader steals, as long as he leaves behind a few kilometres of poor-quality asphalt or a few façades painted in shiny colours. But world history knows not a single case of a country that reached lasting prosperity through enlightened thievery. Asphalt laid without standards on foundations of corruption breaks up in the first rain. A hospital built with theft becomes a cold building short of bandages and syringes. And the painted façade soon fades, leaving the real misery behind.

You cannot have a functioning state without public morality. You cannot have prosperity without accountability.

The reason Albania does not develop at the pace it deserves is not a lack of money, nor a lack of resources, nor a lack of intelligence in its people. The only reason is that we have normalised white-collar crime. We have called the destruction of our own future an ordinary political game that we must make our peace with.

Change will not come from those who profit from this decay. Change will begin the day the Albanian citizen erases that cynical phrase from their vocabulary for good.

The day we understand that stealing from the state budget is not just a television scandal, but is your child's missing scholarship, the medicine your mother lacks in hospital, your low wage and your brother's one-way ticket into emigration.

When we understand that corruption and development are irreconcilable enemies that can never share the same room, the question will no longer be why this country does not develop. The answer will be clear before our eyes, and with it, at last, will be born the courage to demand accountability all the way.