Is Evi Kokalari Berisha's candidate for PD, or another diversion?

Alfred Lela

Evi Kokalari is an Albanian-American who relies on what she projects as the glory of the surname, as well as the strength to say everything she thinks without fear. Anyone familiar with the American media scene would probably agree that Kokalari is a kind of Ann Coulter. Part of an order of women saying things louder than men could say, in male-dominated politics and media settings.

Evi Kokalari is an ardent supporter of the former US president, a species that George Will, a conservative right-wing thinker, calls trumpkins (more or less 'Trump pumpkins' by combining the words trump with pumpkin). Like Trump (certainly on a much smaller scale), she works in real estate in New York, and just like the former President she believes being politically correct is overrated.

Kokalari has her connections in Republican circles, as can be seen from the photos with Trump, Rick Grenell, and others. The chances are that Trump will make a comeback in the 2024 race, based on the millions of votes he received in the last confrontation with Trump, but also on the chances that the Republicans have not produced a strong candidate to regain the White House by then.

If the contexts remain like this, Ms. Kokalari becomes an asset for the Albanian right, which has not managed to shine in relations with the Americans since the distant early 1990s, before the arrest of the four was introduced between Berisha and Washington. exponents of the Greek minority in Albania. Since then, relations between the DP and US administrations have been unstable (as can be shown by the clashes, open or subtext, between successive US ambassadors to Tirana). With the arrival of Basha at the head of the DP, mainly due to the inability of the latter to be the man-in-charge, they have encountered a point in the abyss.

Even the Americans warming up with the DP, through Ambassador Kim's statements in favor of Basha and the 'reluctance to celebrate the return of the Democrats to power again', are an artificial flower hardly thrown into the political garden, only as a counterweight to the bitter return. of Sali Berisha in active politics.

Having said that, the performance of Evi Kokalari, an Albanian-American, who had a meeting with Ambassador Kim, at Berisha's Foltore in Vlora raises some political suspicions.

Does Berisha have diversion, or is it his preliminary proposal to have her as a candidate in the possible race for the DP leader?

I want to deal with the latter because only such a move has interesting political implications.

If this is the goal, the Albanian-American would be a subtle operation in political communication in favor of the DP. First, that she is a woman, second, that she is an American of Albanian descent and, at the same time, engaged in Republican circles there. Not only that: Americans on the other side, the Democrats, would find it easier to find a language with someone who speaks their 'slang'. Internally, Kokalari, being so trumpeted in communication, would find immediate approval among Democrats. She would soon become the candidate of others, who complain about a political process taken hostage by Rama, and the lack of a counterpart.

Kokalari would play in Rama's field, certainly not with eloquence, but with the abrasiveness of the latter.

In short, Evi Kokalari would be a finding of Berisha's operation for political revenge. With a risk, anyway. It is likely that Kokalari, 'Americanized' enough, would quickly clash with its promoter, Berisha, without waiting a decade like Basha, with fear in his heart, until it took the 'approach of the 6th American fleet' to the Adriatic.

If she seeks revenge, the safe path to it for Berisha goes through a trumpkin.