Prime Minister Edi Rama’s main focus during this election campaign is to blame everything wrong with his 4 years in government on the Ilir Meta’s LSI. No matter the occasion, Rama attacks his coalition partner as a party of bargaining that sees the government as a baking tray.
This is in fact a 180-degree turn from his position at the beginning of his mandate. Four years ago, Edi Rama joined with Ilir Meta to form a government, seeing it as the only possibility to come into power. For the last two years, Rama had riled up his party against Ilir Meta, whose infamous corruption tape lay at the basis of the protests of January 21, 2011, in which 4 PS supporters lost their lives, and whom Meta had called “thugs.”
But two years later, on April 3, 2013, Edi Rama wrote a letter to the socialist electorate asking them to join the LSI. Rama justifies this turn as the only solution to get into power and to realize the dream of the Renaissance:
This is why believe with all my heart that the arrival of the LSI in the coalition today is not the end, but the natural continuation of a new history that has started with the project of an Albanian Renaissance. Of a history that only goes from VICTORY and ONLY VICTORY on June 23, as precondition to go further with the Renaissance. I personally also believe that the LSI will not obstruct this project, as I believe that from this union will not give birth to new offspring of the past, but a good government for the future.
A day later he wrote an opinion piece about the PS–LSI coalition and the oblivion of January 21:
Who doesn’t want to betray January 21 shouldn’t drown himself in the empty glass of unlogical moralizations about the union of PS and LSI.
Only afterward [after winning the elections] the days begin in which the morality of the government that we, PS and LSI together, and other will create to revive Albania.
Up to a few months ago, Rama praised his coalition with the LSI, hoping that the party would join in him in a new electoral coalition. On December 26, 2016, Rama stated:
All these reforms we wouldn’t have done if it were not for this coalition. Albania wouldn’t have become a state, if there hadn’t been a coalition. […] I am confident that we will go together and despite everything they should all understand that this is a strategic alliance, not a tactical alliance of who has which post. It is a strategical alliance for the alliance of the next generation.
On December 30, 2016, in Top Story:
It is a social necessity for the country to have two parties and a large progressive force left of the center that does the reforms it has done. After that differences and defects are things that are absolutely important but are no reason to put the strategic partnership in doubt.
And more recently on April 2, 2017, in front of the Electoral Assembly of the PS:
We have made reforms that in 25 years no one has made an effort for. We have made them thanks to an alliance that had 84 votes. Those are more important than the differences.
All of this to underscore the extent of Rama’s about-face and complete flip-flop on a party that he first viciously attacked (2011–2013), then embraced (2013–2017), and only recently started attacking again. On June 7, for example, Rama declared in Vlora:
Their interests are small. They only want to fulfill their party aims. Small parties are no guarantee for democracy, but guarantee for the baking tray.
All of this [the coalition] is a history of being held hostage because either you accept this and you make a coalition or he says no problem, I’m going, I have the baking tray somewhere else.
And the two big parties [PS and PD] have become hostage of this type of auction. This is an auction. What relation does this have with democracy, with the state?
