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In my previous life, I was an artist.

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I still paint. I love art.

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I love the joy that color can give to our lives

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and to our communities,

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and I try to bring something of the artist in me

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in my politics,

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and I see

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part of my job today, the reason for being here,

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not just to campaign for my party,

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but for politics, and the role it can play

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for the better in our lives.

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For 11 years, I was mayor of Tirana, our capital.

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We faced many challenges.

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Art was part of the answer,

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and my name, in the very beginning,

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was linked with two things:

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demolition of illegal constructions

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in order to get public space back,

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and use of colors in order to revive the hope

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that had been lost in my city.

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

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Rather, it was a form of political action

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in a context when the city budget I had available

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after being elected amounted to zero comma something.

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When we painted the first building,

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by splashing a radiant orange on the somber gray

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of a facade,

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something unimaginable happened.

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There was a traffic jam

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and a crowd of people gathered

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as if it were the location of some spectacular accident,

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or the sudden sighting of a visiting pop star.

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The French E.U. official in charge of the funding

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rushed to block the painting.

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He screeched that he would block the financing.

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"But why?" I asked him.

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"Because the colors you have ordered

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do not meet European standards," he replied.

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"Well," I told him,

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"the surroundings do not meet European standards,

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even though this is not what we want,

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but we will choose the colors ourselves,

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because this is exactly what we want.

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And if you do not let us continue with our work,

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I will hold a press conference here,

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right now, right in this road,

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and we will tell people that you look to me

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just like the censors of the socialist realism era."

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Then he was kind of troubled,

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and asked me for a compromise.

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But I told him no, I'm sorry,

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compromise in colors is gray,

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and we have enough gray to last us a lifetime.

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(Applause)

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So it's time for change.

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The rehabilitation of public spaces

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revived the feeling of belonging

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to a city that people lost.

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The pride of people about their own place of living,

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and there were feelings that had been buried

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deep for years under the fury of the illegal,

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barbaric constructions that sprang up in the public space.

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And when colors came out everywhere,

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a mood of change started transforming the spirit of people.

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Big noise raised up: "What is this? What is happening?

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What are colors doing to us?"

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And we made a poll,

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the most fascinating poll I've seen in my life.

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We asked people, "Do you want this action,

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and to have buildings painted like that?"

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And then the second question was,

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

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To the first question,

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63 percent of people said yes, we like it.

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Thirty-seven said no, we don't like it.

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But to the second question, half of them that didn't like it,

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they wanted it to continue. (Laughter)

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So we noticed change.

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

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started to pay taxes,

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started to feel something they had forgotten,

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and beauty was acting as a guardsman

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where municipal police, or the state itself, were missing.

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One day I remember walking along a street

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that had just been colored,

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and where we were in the process of planting trees,

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when I saw a shopkeeper and his wife

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putting a glass facade to their shop.

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They had thrown the old shutter

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in the garbage collection place.

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

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

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

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"Come on, man! What policemen?

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You can see it for yourself. There are colors,

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streetlights, new pavement with no potholes,

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trees. So it's beautiful; it's safe."

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And indeed, it was beauty that was giving people

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this feeling of being protected.

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And this was not a misplaced feeling.

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Crime did fall.

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The freedom that was won in 1990

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brought about a state of anarchy in the city,

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while the barbarism of the '90s

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brought about a loss of hope for the city.

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The paint on the walls did not feed children,

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nor did it tend the sick or educate the ignorant,

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but it gave hope and light,

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and helped to make people see

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there could be a different way of doing things,

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a different spirit, a different feel to our lives,

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and that if we brought the same energy and hope

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to our politics, we could build a better life

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for each other and for our country.

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We removed 123,000 tons of concrete

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only from the riverbanks.

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We demolished more than 5,000 illegal buildings

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all over the city,

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up to eight stories high, the tallest of them.

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We planted 55,000 trees and bushes in the streets.

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We established a green tax,

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and then everybody accepted it

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and all businessmen paid it regularly.

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By means of open competitions,

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we managed to recruit in our administration

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many young people,

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and we thus managed to build

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a de-politicized public institution

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where men and women were equally represented.

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International organizations

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have invested a lot in Albania during these 20 years,

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not all of it well spent.

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When I told the World Bank directors

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that I wanted them to finance a project to build

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a model reception hall for citizens

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precisely in order to fight endemic daily corruption,

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they did not understand me.

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But people were waiting in long queues

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under sun and under rain

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in order to get a certificate or just a simple answer

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from two tiny windows of two metal kiosks.

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They were paying in order to skip the queue,

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the long queue.

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The reply to their requests was met

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by a voice coming from this dark hole,

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and, on the other hand,

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a mysterious hand coming out to take their documents

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while searching through old documents for the bribe.

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We could change the invisible clerks within the kiosks,

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every week, but we could not change this corrupt practice.

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"I'm convinced," I told a German official

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with the World Bank,

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"that it would be impossible for them to be bribed

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if they worked in Germany,

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in a German administration,

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just as I am convinced that if you put German officials

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from the German administration in those holes,

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they would be bribed just the same."

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(Applause)

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It's not about genes.

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It's not about some being with a high conscience

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and some others having not a conscience.

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It's about system, it's about organization.

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It's also about environment and respect.

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We removed the kiosks.

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We built the bright new reception hall

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that made people, Tirana citizens,

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think they had traveled abroad when they entered

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to make their requests.

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We created an online system of control

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and so speeded up all the processes.

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We put the citizen first, and not the clerks.

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The corruption in the state administration

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of countries like Albania --

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it's not up to me to say also like Greece --

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can be fought only by modernization.

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Reinventing the government by reinventing politics itself

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is the answer, and not reinventing people

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based on a ready-made formula

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that the developed world often tries in vain to impose

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to people like us.

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(Applause)

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Things have come to this point

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because politicians in general,

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but especially in our countries, let's face it,

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think people are stupid.

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They take it for granted that, come what may,

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people have to follow them,

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while politics, more and more, fails to offer answers

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for their public concerns

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or the exigencies of the common people.

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Politics has come to resemble

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a cynical team game played by politicians,

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while the public has been pushed aside

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as if sitting on the seats of a stadium

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in which passion for politics

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is gradually making room for blindness and desperation.

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Seen from those stairs, all politicians today

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seem the same,

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and politics has come to resemble

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a sport that inspires more aggressiveness

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and pessimism than social cohesion

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and the desire for civic protaganism.

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Barack Obama won

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— (Applause) —

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because he mobilized people as never before

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through the use of social networks.

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He did not know each and every one of them,

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but with an admirable ingenuity,

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he managed to transform them into activists

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by giving them all the possibility to hold in their hands

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the arguments and the instruments that each would need

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to campaign in his name by making his own campaign.

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I tweet. I love it.

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I love it because it lets me get the message out,

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but it also lets people get their messages to me.

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This is politics, not from top down,

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but from the bottom up, and sideways,

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and allowing everybody's voice to be heard

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is exactly what we need.

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Politics is not just about leaders.

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It's not just about politicians and laws.

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It is about how people think,

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how they view the world around them,

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how they use their time and their energy.

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When people say all politicians are the same,

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ask yourself if Obama was the same as Bush,

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if François Hollande is the same as Sarkozy.

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They are not. They are human beings with different views

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and different visions for the world.

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When people say nothing can change,

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just stop and think what the world was like

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10, 20, 50, 100 years ago.

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Our world is defined by the pace of change.

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We can all change the world.

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I gave you a very small example

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of how one thing, the use of color,

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can make change happen.

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I want to make more change

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as Prime Minister of my country,

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but every single one of you can make change happen

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if you want to.

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President Roosevelt, he said,

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"Believe you can, and you are halfway there."

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Efharisto and kalinihta.

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(Applause)