Prime Minister Edi Rama has once again called on the Albanian opposition to seat in talks with his government.
The opposition left the parliament in February, it refused to enter local elections in June, and has been demanding the resignation of Rama ever since. They have rejected Rama’s calls before the earthquake to seat in talks to discuss the political crisis in Albania. The opposition accuses Rama of state capture, ties to crime, and corruption.
Tweeting from the NATO summit in London, one week after a devastating earthquake took the lives of 51 people and wreaked a havoc in several regions in Albania, Rama accused opposition leader Lulzim Basha of using “dark words” when visiting earthquake victims, and keeping a face “as if it was you to lose your house, not them”. He then invited Basha to seat in talks.
“Dear Lulzim, there is nothing worse a politician can do in these gloomy days than looking for people who have not been accommodated yet, and use them to do politics! There are many [people] who need our help and the warmth of anyone who can offer it! Come, let’s cooperate…
Don’t be done with your dark words and your look that shows as if you lost your home, not those miserable people, who end up being a metallic background serving to broadcast the gloom of the very old politics, instead of the human warmth! Let’s help them together with some light, they already have enough gloom🙏”
Since November 26 earthquake, Rama has repeatedly and insistently called on the opposition to seat in talks.
Yesterday, Basha stated while visiting a camp for earthquake victims that conditions there were “very grave”, with some ill elderly and infants, and a lot of mud in the camp. He called on the government to shelter people into two schools nearby, and to better coordinate relief efforts.
Whilst thousands of people have become homeless, and thousands more are afraid to go back to their damaged houses, the opposition had earlier suggested three measures to be taken urgently: speeding up the verification of damages, informing people which buildings were safe and which ones needed to be demolished, and cancelling about €150 in controversial concession contracts awarded to “10 oligarchs”.
Rama firmly dismissed the last point, and ridiculed the opposition suggestions – “food for smiles, I am not saying food for laughs,” he said.
The prime minister said that cancelling concession contract would be “apocalyptic”– the lives of many people would be in danger, as hospitals would have no medical tools anymore, people would not be able to have their annual health check-up, and the Rruga e Arbrit Highway would not be completed.
The concession contracts awarded through public-private partnerships (PPP), often through unsolicited proposals, have been a controversial policy of the Rama government. The opposition has denounced several of these contracts as corrupt. The unsolicited proposals and public-private partnerships in Albania have been criticized by all major international organizations, including the European Commission, World Bank, IMF, EBRD, EU Court of Auditors, European Network on Debt and Development, as well as independent domestic watchdogs.
“Why these suggestions? Because they have no more fantasy than this. I understand them, they have their own issues caused by the earthquake,” Rama said. He then suggested they seat in talks with the opposition “to talk on ideas”.
“The government is obliged to put an end to talk and set about implicating concrete actions,” deputy head of opposition Democratic Party Edi Paloka replied to Rama’s last tweet.
