Prime Minister Edi Rama today gathered 20 mayors and Socialist Party regional leaders at a restaurant in Kuç, Vlorë, for a meeting lasting more than four hours to discuss the new territorial map.
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Among the mayors present were those whose municipalities are expected to be merged into larger local government units, reducing the current number of municipalities from 61 to 46.
Sources said the prime minister’s fiercest clash was with the mayor of Poliçan, the first town where residents protested against the dissolution of their municipality.
During that protest, some Socialist Party supporters publicly burned their membership cards, accusing the party of being ungrateful for the support the town had given it.
Adriatik Zotkaj has led the municipality since 2004, winning six consecutive local elections.
The public burning of Socialist Party membership cards by supporters in Poliçan was strongly criticized by Prime Minister Rama immediately after the protest held in the town.
Rama called it a shameful act.
“The horseman’s lament that his legs are dangling continues, most recently accompanied by great agitation from male and female mourners, who now claim that protests are taking place even ‘within the Socialist Party’ and that this is supposedly a terribly bad sign for the ‘regime.’ In fact, no. Apart from the shameful act in one instance of burning Socialist Party membership cards by several individuals who themselves did not fully understand what they were doing, or the occasional case when our MPs have played the role of ‘champions of the common people’ without fully understanding what they are saying, everything else is not only normal but also welcome,” Rama said.
