Prime Minister Edi Rama will resign as the Chairman of the Socialist Party if he loses the general election on 25 April.
Asked by journalist Nisida Tufa on News 24, Rama said;
“If I leave the Prime Minister’s Office, I will still serve the Socialist Party, but not doing what does not belong to me.”
Rama is Albania’s 33d Prime Minister and has been the Chairman of the Socialist Party since 2005. He was the Mayor of Tirana in 2000 and was re-elected for two subsequent terms. He then became Prime Minister in 2013 via a coalition of center-left parties including LSI and defeating the incumbent Democratic Part led by Sali Berisha.
He then won the 2017 general election.
Rama is the son of Kristaq Rama, a well-known sculptor who created many statues of communist dictator Enver Hoxha. His mother was the sister of Spiro Koleka, a member of the Communist Politburo. In 1988, Rama’s father signed documents ordering the execution of poet Havzi Nela by hanging. It’s also alleged he signed the death order for a 29-year-old man called Enver Osmani.
The Prime Minister sparked criticism when in a parliamentary session in 2020, he acknowledged that his father was a communist and said he was “on the right side of history”. This controversy was renewed when he appointed Luljeta Bozo as a candidate for the 2021 elections. She made comments on television recently when she said that communism and dictator Enver Hoxha had both positives and negatives.
