Xhavit's question

"So you've voted three times and you still don't know who has the stamp?"

Xhavit arrived on August 3, as always, with Stuttgart license plates and with that habit he has had for fifteen years: ask. He doesn't ask to learn. He asks to check how much we have changed since last August. Xhavit is a good man, but he has an investigative method that tires you out — he starts with the price of tomatoes, moves on to salaries, and ends with geopolitics. In between, he always inserts a question to which you have no answer.

This time he put it in for the second coffee.

— Who is your president now?

I had the cup in my mouth. I dropped it. Because the answer is not a word. It is a lesson.

— We have an acting manager.

also Arberi 19 January 2026 743 votes were taken away, Haliti: It was done by someone who wanted to make me an MP

— How old are you?

— The President's term ended on April 4. When a new president is not elected, the Speaker of the Assembly takes over.

— Why didn't you choose the young man?

— We tried.

— What?

— They didn't come.

— Who didn't come?

— Deputies.

— Where were they?

— Outside the hall.

Xhaviti put down his glass of water. Xhaviti makes a movement, when he realizes that the conversation is escaping him, that only he does: he looks towards the street, as if he has left something there.

I then told him the whole chain, as one should tell a person who leaves in February and returns in August. That on March 5, the quorum was not met. That the president dissolved the Assembly the next day. That the Constitutional Court suspended the decree, and then said that the decree had no legal force, and gave the Assembly another thirty-four days. That on April 28, the quorum was not met again and the Assembly was dissolved at zero. Fixed at zero. That on June 7, we voted again — the third election within eighteen months. That today, August 6, the deputies of the eleventh legislature are being sworn in, and from today begins the sixty-day period to elect the president.

— And if you don't choose it?

— Election.

— Again?

— The fourth.

Xhaviti fell silent. Then he asked the question that ruined my coffee:

— So you've voted three times and you still don't know who has the stamp?

I said yes. What else can you say?

And here, perhaps, is the problem that even the analyst with three screens behind his back does not catch. Xhaviti has a Kosovo in his head. That Kosovo has a president, a prime minister, an assembly and a neighborhood where he has his parents' house. He sends money to a sister, pays for her wedding, builds a floor above the floor, and once a year he comes to see if the work has progressed. He does not ask for much. He asks for a one-word answer.

And we no longer have the answer in one word. We only have the procedure. And the procedure, when shown to the person who has fled, is not heard as a state — it is heard as an excuse.

There's another number I didn't say that day, because I didn't want to ruin the vacation. On December 28th, forty-five percent voted. On June 7th, thirty-six and eight. That is, between the two elections, within five and a half months, almost a tenth of the voters withdrew. They didn't change their party. They changed their habit.

Because this is the expense that is not included in any budget. Campaign after campaign, people don't get angry — they get used to it. And when they get used to it, they stop. Politics thinks it has lost a percentage; in reality, it has lost a habit that is built over decades and lost with three leaflets.

Xhavit left at five, as always, with the car filled to the brim. He paid for the coffee, as always. And at the door, with the keys in his hand, he asked one more question, a smaller one, which I remember better than the others:

— Tell me one thing: when I think about it, who is holding the seal during this time?

— Acting.

— Aha — he said. — So you all have a duty, but the job doesn't have a mistress.

He laughed and left.

The government has been "in office" since February. The presidency has been "in office" since April. The Assembly was constituted today and has been in office for sixty days. In this entire country, the only one who is not in office is the citizen — because he has no office, he has a queue.

In other words: we have a state where everyone is in office, and no one has the job.

(Published without intervention, as the machine released it, except for the subtitle that was added by a human)