A Case for Politics - Edi Rama at TEDxThessaloniki

Urban renovator and politician Εdi Rama makes a case for politics, at TEDxThessaloniki 2012. Once a painter, Rama talks about bringing color across many of Tirana's old buildings and communist era high rises, arguing that beauty, if offered a chance, will bring beauty.

Kalispera.

This is quite a tough event for me.

I speak English,

but my command
of English language

is as good as

the bankers' command
of global economy.

(Laughter) (Applause)

I am...

a foreigner visiting a country

currently beset with problems

almost too overwhelming
to be contemplated.

And, yes -- it's not enough --

I'm also a politician.

At the time, this breed

is on a par with
a second-hand car salesman.

So...

Anyway, now, being a politician
is not always so hard.

If I was Barack Obama...

..you would be excited,
wouldn't you?

Go on! Admit it!

He has charisma by the gallon.

And he is the leader of
a country so powerful

that his decisions affect all of us

not only Americans.

But you would be excited,
if I was Angela Merkel, too.

She has not his charisma,

but she has real power
as the leader of Europe's

biggest country, and you all know
something about that, no?

And if I was
Francois Hollande, too,

you would be excited because
he is the man of the moment.

So, where we come from

is such a determining
factor in our lives.

Do you sometimes watch football

and think, for example,

how different Lionel Messi...

..and Lionel Messi's
life would have been

if he had been from Luxemburg
and not from Argentina?

Or Pelé from Kosovo?

Or Maradona from Crete?

Or if Churchill, or Lincoln,
or Napoleon from Greenland?

I am from Albania.

It is not Greenland

but it is not US,

nor Germany, nor France.

And I am in opposition

not in the government.

So, yes, I know.

I know what you were thinking,
many of you, when,

called by a friend, you were told,

"Hey, do you want
to come to this TEDx

and hear this guy,
Edi Rama, speak?"

"Edi, who?"

"Yes, Edi Rama. He is the leader
of the Albanian opposition"

"All right."

-"He is socialist".
-"Oh, yes, how exciting!"

But I suppose things
could have been even worse.

I could have
been the leader of PASOK.

(Laughter) (Applause)

But I hope

what I have to say

is somehow worth hearing

because in this era of cynicism,

I want to make
the case for politics.

In my previous life, I was an artist.

I still paint. I love art.

I love the joy that colour can give...

...to our lives
and to our communities.

And I try to bring something

of the artist in me in my politics.

Politics is not boring by itself.

It is not without meaning,

nor without purpose.

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.

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 the use of colours

in order to revive the hope
that had been lost in my city.

But this use of colours
was not just an artistic act.

Rather, it was a form
of political action

in a context when
the city budgets I had available

after being elected, amounted to
zero-comma-something.

When we painted the first building
by splashing radiant orange

on the sombre grey of a facade

in one of Tirana's entrances

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.

The French EU official
in charge of the funding

rushed to block the painting.

He screeched that
he would block the financing.

"But why?", I asked him.

"Because the colours
you have ordered

"do not meet the
European standards", he replied.

"Well", I told him,

"the surroundings
do not meet European standards

even though
this is not what we want

but we will choose
the colours 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 socialist realism era."

Then he was kind of troubled
and asked me for a compromise.

But I told him, "No, I'm sorry.

"Compromise in colours is grey.

"And we have enough grey
to last us for a lifetime.

(Applause)

So it's time for change.

The rehabilitation of public spaces

revives 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 furore of the
illegal barbaric constructions

that sprang up on the public space.

And when colours came out
by "punching" eyes everywhere,

a mood of change
started transforming

the spirit of the people.
But also a noise raised up.

A big noise. "What is this?
What colours are doing to us?"

So, the courage to create was
somehow tackled by kind of doubt.

Am I burning here my mandate

so fast with these colours?

And we made a poll, the most
fascinating poll I've seen in my life.

We asked people,
"Do you want...

...this action and have buildings
painted like that?"

And then the second question was,

"Do you want it to stop
or to continue?"

To the first question,
63% of people said:

"Yes, we like it".
37 % said: "No, we don't like it".

But to the second question,

half of them that didn't like,
they it wanted it to continue.

So, we noticed change.

People started to drop less litter
in the streets, for example.

Started to pay taxes,

started to feel something
they have forgotten.

And beauty was acting
as a guardsman

where municipal police
or the state itself were missing.

One day, I remember
walking along the street,

that had just been coloured

and where we were in
the process of planting trees,

when I saw a shopkeeper
and his wife

putting a glass facade to the shop.

They had thrown the old shutter
in the garbage collection place.

"Why did you throw away
the shutters?" I asked them.

"Well, because the street
is safer now", they answered.

"Safer? Why? They have posted
more policemen here?"

"Come on, man! What policemen?
You can see it for yourself!

There are colours, street lights,

new pavements
with no potholes, trees.

So, it's beautiful, it's safe."

And indeed, it was beauty
that was giving people

this feeling of being protected.

Even by criminals.

And at the end this was
not a misplaced feeling.

Crime did fall.

The freedom that was won in 1990

brought about a state
of anarchy in the city.

Well, the barbarism of the '90s

brought about the loss of hope for the city.

The painting 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 moved 123,000
tons of concrete

only from the riverbanks.

We demolished more than 5,000
illegal buildings

around all over the city

til eight-storey 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 depoliticized public institution

where men and women
were equally represented.

It helped with corruption, too.

International organisations
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
all documents for the bribe.

We could change the invisible
clerks within the kiosks every week

but we could not change
this corrupt practice.

"I am convinced",
I told a German official

with the World Bank,

"that it would be impossible
for them to be bribed,

if they were in Germany,

in your 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."

It's not about --

(Applause)

It's not about genes,

it's not about some being
with a high consciousness

and some others
having not a consciousness.

It's about system.
It's about organisation.

It's also about
environment and respect.

We removed the kiosks.

We built a bright
new reception hall

that made people,
Tirana citizens,

think they had travelled abroad,

when they entered
to make their requests.

We created
an online system of control

and so speeded up all processes.

We put the citizen first
and not the clerks.

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 governments

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 that.

Things --

(Applause)

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 protagonism.

Barack Obama won because --

(Applause)

-- because he mobilized people,

as never before, through
the use of social networks.

He did not know
each and every 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's 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?

Is Francois Hollande
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

ten, twenty, fifty,
a hundred years ago.

Our world is defined
by the pace of change.

We can all change the world.

I gave you a very small example

of how one thing,

the use of colour,
can make change happen.

I want to make more changes

as Prime Minister of my country

but every single one of you
can make change happen,

if you want to.

I started with one US President

and I will end
with another - Roosevelt.

He said, "Believe you can
and you're halfway there".

Efcharisto' and kalinichta.

(Applause)