Let’s not make Albania great again
The big news about Albania’s first parliamentary election since it formally opened accession negotiations with the European Union: it probably won’t do a Trump.
Late on election day, May 11, information from Tirana suggested that Prime Minister Edi Rama and his ruling Socialist Party may win an historic fourth term.
If so, it will mean that Donald Trump’s campaign adviser and Republican election guru Chris LaCivita failed.
He will have failed to manage an election victory for a politician in trouble with the law.
Mr LaCivita had been helping Albania’s main opposition party, whose leader Sali Berisha was hoping for a political comeback from corruption allegations.
Mr Berisha’s conservative party (somewhat confusingly, it goes by the name Democratic Party of Albania) had set great store by Mr LaCivita’s political chops.
Politico has quoted Democratic Party spokesperson Alfred Lela to take great pride in the similarities between Mr Berisha’s plight and that of Mr Trump.
“In the last two years, Chris LaCivita has advised two major political figures, in two different countries … those two cases are Donald Trump and Sali Berisha,” Mr Lela said.
He added that both men have “remarkably similar profiles … [they were] persecuted by establishments — domestic and international — targeted by their countries’ justice systems, and painted as dangerous underdogs who must be eliminated from politics at any cost”.
The reference was to the Biden administration’s 2021 decision to put Mr Berisha and his two children on a blacklist that barred entry to the US. Then US secretary of state Antony Blinken cited “significant corruption” on the part of the man who was Albania’s first democratically elected president and served two terms as prime minister.
Mr Berisha was said to be involved in the “misappropriation of public funds and interfering with public processes…for his own benefit and to enrich his political allies and his family members at the expense of the Albanian public’s confidence in their government institutions and public officials”.
According to his party spokesperson, Mr Blinken “never provided a single piece of proof” for the charges.
The disgraced 80-year-old decided to fight back and turned to Mr LaCivita, who helped Mr Trump return to the White House despite a felony conviction .
In his conversation with Politico, Mr Berisha’s party spokesman added that Mr LaCivita was “inspired” by the task ahead in Albania. “He joined a difficult campaign, for a party trying to rebuild itself after being pushed to the edge of political execution,” Mr Lela said.
Indeed Mr LaCivita has publicly said that “with a thriving democracy and true friendship with America, we can make Albania great again”.
Whoever Albania elects, here’s what’s likely to stay great: the Trump family’s bank balance. Politico writes: “[Prime minister] Rama also handed over one of the most lucrative development projects in the country’s modern history to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, including a 99-year-lease on the island of Sazan — a deserted former military intelligence base off the glittering southern coast of Albania — and land on the Vjosa River delta”.
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
