Rama accused the citizen of building without a permit, the building actually dates back to 1941

Prime Minister Edi Rama accused one of the tens of thousands of protesters who are demanding his resignation and the overthrow of the system that he and opposition leader Sali Berisha created eighteen years ago of being the author of illegal construction, insinuating hypocrisy, but activist Entela Spahivogli responded by indicating that the building in question dates back to 1941 and is not illegal.

Meanwhile, footage from 1966 seems to show that the building that Rama described as unauthorized has been in the same condition at least since then.

The Prime Minister published a photo of the activist calling for protest as well as a photo of a building,  writing : “Left: A scandalous unauthorized addition within the walls of the Durrës castle. […] Right: A protester sworn to protect the environment […] She is the builder of the unauthorized addition herself.”

The building presented by the Prime Minister is four-story, of which the first three floors are restored while the fourth floor is unrestored. But unlike the Prime Minister's accusations, Spahivogli, one of the protesters against the TID project in Durres, a project for which citizens are protesting especially due to the low value of the compensation offered, a value that leaves them practically homeless, said that the building in question, not only is it licensed and not only has it never been accused of illegal construction, but it dates back to 1941.

"Before you slander, Mr. Prime Minister, verify the facts," Spahivogli declared.

"The building you present as an 'unauthorized addition' is part of a building built by the Koja and Jakoel families in 1941, with Italian designs and builders. Its history is proven by legal and historical documents, photographs, films and evidence of the time,"  she added .

Aleksandër Cangonja, a citizen from Durrës passionate about historical documents, published a frame taken from a film stored in the Central Film Archive in which the building appears exactly as in the prime minister's photo, i.e. without unauthorized construction.

“The view of the Central State Film Archive, taken before 1966, clearly shows that the facility was built in the form it still has today,”  Cangonja wrote .

The Prime Minister did not respond to BIRN's questions until the publication of this article.

Prime Minister Edi Rama is facing the biggest political crisis of his career that began in 1998. For 21 days, thousands of citizens have been demanding his resignation and a complete political change in the country. On certain days, like the evening of June 20, the number of protesters seems to reach tens of thousands, perhaps more than 100,000.

Protesters have labeled the protest the "Flamingo Revolution," to signal that they are seeking not simply the overthrow of a prime minister, but an epochal change in policymaking.

The Prime Minister thus joins the list of other socialist officials who have used blatantly false information to attack the protesters. The protesters have been attacked, among other things, as agents of the enemy, while Rama has raised the hypothesis without providing any facts that the protests, far from being an expression of popular anger against his government, are the product of a “hybrid war.”

Earlier, MP Taulant Balla published a photo of a vehicle with Serbian license plates in Zvërnec, suggesting that there were “Serbs” among the protesters. After it became widely known that the vehicle did not belong to Serbian protesters, but to a team of journalists from the Reuters agency, Balla seems to have ignored the facts and continues to post it without retracting it or apologizing.  /BIRN