The loud boom of the Molotov sounded like a bomb. Flames and smoke rose up, creating a haze in the air. I had felt something was going to happen, a minute or so before the first Molotov was launched in the air. There were whispers, tension, a mood in the crowd and I started looking around, wondering when and where it would happen.

And while I knew what to expect, given this had become a weekly occurrence, I was still caught off-guard when the Molotov was thrown directly at City Hall. My hands shook as I photographed, the adrenaline shooting up my brain.

I wanted to leave, but the Molotovs continued. Each one was less of a shock than the last, but the bang still sent shockwaves through me.

At this moment I understood, for a very brief second, how difficult it is to be a war photographer. Not that a few Molotovs could ever compare to airstrikes and bombs. The daily trauma, the enormous risks taken on to document the world’s atrocities. Defying your body’s instinct to run away, all to serve a greater purpose. We venerate doctors and nurses for their service, but war photographers rarely get the same respect and acknowledgment of their sacrifices.

Supporters of the opposition party have been meeting weekly in the capital of Albania to protest. They want the mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj, and the Socialist Prime Minister, Edi Rama, to resign.

Five of Veliaj’s directors have been caught embezzling up to 30 million euros of taxpayer money. Veliaj is still under investigation; we have yet to find out just how aware he was of this corruption happening right under his nose.

I was there in Tirana at one of these protests. Since my long-term documentary project is on Albania, how it’s changed, and what life is like there currently, I thought it important to witness and capture the very real frustrations of Tirana’s citizens in tackling the insidious effects of corruption in our prized liberal democracies.

Political signs, and politicians abound, giving speeches in front of a dozen television cameras, a performance of sorts from the center-right Democratic Party.

The politicians with their flowery words continued to ask the police to step aside, to let them into City Hall. The crowd pushed into the barricades, ramming their bodies hopelessly against riot shields.

Their ultimate mission failed, as the police stood ready in large numbers to protect the building from unwanted intruders and extinguish the Molotov flames.

It all reminded me of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, a dark day for American democracy, where hundreds of Trump supporters stormed in to “defend” election integrity after being convinced that the previous election was rigged.

More than 1,400 people have been arrested for their involvement in the January 6th attack and more than 500 of those have been sentenced to prison, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Source

The only difference is that this corruption scandal is very real, while election fraud in the 2020 American election was a lie fabricated by Donald Trump and spread by his enablers.

In Albania, the opposition Democratic Party screams corruption at the ruling Socialist Party, and given the recent scandals, they have the right to do so.

Yet they purposefully gloss over the fact that their leader, former Prime Minister Sali Berisha, is currently under house arrest due to his own ongoing corruption investigation. So corrupt was his tenure of power in Albania, that he has been deemed a non-gratis person by the US, and is unable to enter the country.

At the protest, the politicians and speakers waxed poetic about him. He is their leader, their voice.

“He is the only one who understands us,” they chanted.

He sings to crowds from the window of his apartment, a microphone set up to amplify his voice to the men that stand below, gazing up at him as if he were God himself.

Two parties, both imbued with corrupt actors, thinking only of themselves and profiting at the expense of the people they are supposed to represent.

It’s a situation that reminds of the US.

Hear me out. Yes, America is the land of opportunity, where anything can happen, and yet billionaires live side by side with homeless people.

But in short, political corruption is legal in America. It may sound hard to believe, especially if you are not from America and have a tendency to see this country with rose-colored eyeglasses.

For three years, I worked at a democracy non-profit called RepresentUs. There, I quickly learned the perils and challenges of American democracy like it was the back of my hand. (I also have a background in political science, so the infiltration of corporate interests into our government was not necessarily breaking news.) RepresentUs has no partisan lean, meaning it does not identify with any political party. Its only objective is to improve our democracy, and make it function and work for the American people.

During my time working there, I learned the very intricate but clear as day ways that corporate interests have corrupted American democracy, and how politicians work with lobbyists to write favorable laws and fundraise for their campaigns.

American politicians don’t have to deal with corruption scandals and prison time because they’ve found loopholes, and made these relationships between businesses and politicians perfectly legal. (There are still plain bribery cases too, most recently Senator Bob Mendenez for New Jersey who accepted gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for political favors and aiding the governments of Egypt and Qatar.)

Freedom House, a nonprofit that tracks and ranks democracies worldwide, noted in its most recent report that global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year.

Political rights and civil liberties decreased in 52 countries, while 21 countries saw improvements. While America is still ranked by Freedom House as a “free” country, with a score of 83/100 (compared to Albania’s 68/100 score), there’s no doubt that the political situation here is less than ideal.

On July 13, former President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump barely survived an attempted assassination attempt. The bullet was an inch away from hitting his brain.

Political polarization is at an all-time high, lobbyists continue to write our laws, and politicians profit by using insider information to trade stocks.

Republicans continue to espouse false claims about the 2020 election being “rigged”: Most recent polling shows 1 in 3 American adults believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election. (

This is just scraping the surface. And this is in America, the supposed beacon of freedom worldwide.

There’s a famous saying about democracy:

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the forms that have been tried before it.”

*Mei Seva is a documentary photographer & visual artist born in Albania and based in New York City