Prime Minister Edi Rama has reacted regarding yesterday’s developments in the protest, when the Tirana-Durres highway and the Rinas road were blocked for several hours.
In a post on social networks, the prime minister says that the gatherings have lost touch with the initial cause and are damaging Albania’s image, the tourist season and the investment climate in the country.
Rama severely criticized the organizers of the protest, describing the recent developments as influenced by “destructive forces” and “extremism”, while emphasizing that the government has acted in accordance with the public interest and international standards.
“Protesters are free to peacefully protest what they want, how they want and as long as they want, but without wanting to moralize you, I can’t help but tell them:
- This protest no longer has anything to do with Sazan or Zvrnec, because all the documentation of the process and all the documented approach to the government clearly show that the government is at the height of the public interest and the best international standards and practices.
- This protest is hitting the image of Albania and the tourist season, feeding the negative and untrue perception of a country unfriendly to the environment, inhospitable to foreign investments and unsafe for tourists. Cancellations of hotel reservations and road blockages herald a not positive season economically, for many, many families and people who have direct or indirect connections with the value chain of the tourism industry.
- This protest that manages to degrade into a crowd directed by evil minds and evil hands towards the airport road, blocking the night in the streets of thousands of people in their free movement, has within it exactly that great evil of extremism that inspires online bullying and the ungrateful disruption of the rhythm of life of the majority.
- Pity for the young men and women disappointed by the blind march towards Rinas with the taste of their freedom and independence and in the name of an imaginary revolution, until they themselves realized what a fool they had done by going behind the corners infiltrated by destructive forces, inside or outside, which are doing their best to damage Albania as much as possible. I wish they would wake up from this mess as soon as possible and disconnect an hour earlier from the evil minds and evil hands that have already taken control of the protest.
- This protest has also exalted many characters with a name heard in the majesty of public life. With their shallow minds they have joined it in different ways, on the boulevard or in the social and media channels, with the idea that the sea has become yogurt, the government is drowning, a new hour has come for the spoons in their generations.
But if there are real beneficiaries of this protest, they are only two:
The Albanian government, which will definitely learn the lessons it needs from the open part of the protest, properly addressing the legitimate concerns of that part, and the Socialist Party, which when the fog clears will severely disappoint all its opponents, appearing bigger and stronger in the center of Albania’s political scene.writes Rama.
