Protest exposes Rama’s image as a gangster / One month of revolt demanding the prime minister’s resignation, Belgian newspaper LE SOIR: Ready to sell off natural assets, his power is being shaken

Could Edi Rama be one of the next collateral victims of Trumpism?

By offering Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner the island of Sazan and several thousand hectares of wild coastline, the 61-year-old Socialist prime minister, in power since 2013, surely thought he would strengthen his status as the most powerful man in the country and win the sympathy of the American president.

But footage of angry Albanians being mistreated by private security staff during the installation of the construction site, under the eyes of a passive police force, sparked one of the biggest protest movements since the fall of the dictatorship in 1991.

These images also drew the attention of the international media to the way Edi Rama governs.

For more than a month, every evening, crowds of Albanians have marched beneath his windows shouting, “Albania is not for sale,” and demanding his resignation.

These gatherings, lively and entirely peaceful, were very quickly dubbed the “Pink Flamingo Revolution.”

This bird, present in its thousands in the Vjosa-Narta protected lagoon, has become the symbol of the protest. It is precisely there that a giant luxury tourism complex linked to the Trump family could be built.

This is a 4 billion euro investment, which the prime minister calls “a historic opportunity.”

However, the project has been tainted by suspicions of money laundering linked to Albanian criminal groups, which have become key players in international drug trafficking.

The artist who became culture minister and then the unconventional mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama was long presented as the only man capable of bringing Albania into the 21st century.

But today, in the protests, he is portrayed wearing a gangster mask, ready to sell off the country’s most precious natural and cultural assets.

For Albania’s Generation Z, which is filling the streets of the capital with its voice, the former professional basketball player is the embodiment of a political system rotten with clientelism and mafia interests.

A system that is driving young people to leave the country: 160,000 people are thought to have left Albania between 2021 and 2026, while today Albania is believed to have only 2.3 million inhabitants (compared with just over 3 million according to the 2001 census).

“The artist playing the role of prime minister”

Faced with the scale of the protest, the most powerful man in Tirana denounces a “hybrid war,” which he says is being waged by foreign interests, sometimes Greek, sometimes Iranian, and sometimes Kosovar (although Kosovo is inhabited by around 92% Albanians).

He also questions the integrity of foreign journalists and attacks several figures in the protest movement on social media.

In an interview with the Financial Times on June 23, he simply told the protesters: “Go fuck yourselves.”

He then added: “It is not my job to prove that I am not the padrino; it is their job to prove that I am.”

This polyglot, who cultivates his eccentric image at international summits, has usually shown far more finesse in his communication.

In recent years, from Emmanuel Macron to Giorgia Meloni and even Ursula von der Leyen, everyone has praised “dear Edi,” who has aligned Albania with the geopolitical positions of the European Union, while EU membership has occasionally been mentioned as possible in 2030.

Re-elected last year for a fourth term, he now sees his power beginning to wobble.

As skyscrapers and luxury hotels multiply across the country, in a place where the minimum wage barely exceeds 500 euros, SPAK, the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office — created in 2019 under pressure from Brussels and Washington — is opening more and more investigations into these real estate projects, suspected of being linked to the laundering of cocaine trafficking money.

Several senior figures in the Socialist Party have been placed under investigation.

These are precisely the links denounced by protesters when they chant: “Government of crime!”

But Edi Rama, at least for now, dismisses these accusations with a wave of the hand.

For more than a decade, “the artist playing the role of prime minister” has promoted the image of a progressive, modern Albania, open to investors and on the road to the European Union.

Today, the narrative built by Edi Rama is colliding with the “Pink Flamingo Revolution” and with a youth that is insistently demanding justice, democracy and deep political change.

By Louis Seiller, LE SOIR