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OP-ED

Edi Rama's anti-American campaign

Politiko 2025-04-29 12:17:22

Alfred Lela

There’s no need to line up theories or backstage gossip about Rama regarding his non-liquid relationship with the new American administration, or his efforts to renew access after the Democrats’ loss, and consequently, the decline of Soros’s influence in Washington.

It’s enough to observe his campaign, or its narrative, to see that Rama is trying to rebrand himself as a pro-European figure while souring into an American-skeptic.
He is attempting to ride the European wave of American skepticism that followed Trump’s victory, and from it, extract domestic electoral benefits.
Let’s be clear: Edi Rama is neither anti-American nor anti-European — he doesn't have the guts to be either. But he needs both, and every posture he adopts, whether toward one side or the other, is purely political necessity.

Rama no longer has the U.S. Embassy as an ally ready to leap into the fire for every ethical or political transgression of his. Nor does he have the protective umbrella of the Soros family in Washington anymore.

That’s why he has scrubbed the 50 stars of the American Confederacy (metaphorically) from his campaign speeches, replacing them with the 12 blondies of the European flag.
He is conducting a plastic surgery of propaganda: subtle enough not to disfigure himself before the Americans, while trying to present himself to the Europeans as a reliable partner in an increasingly unpredictable post-Communist Balkans.
Not a fanatic of America — especially not of Trump’s America — but a Euro-Atlanticist, where Europe has its rightful place, voice, and weight.

It’s not just the macro changes that have forced Rama into a turn he never truly desired. The fact that his wife had signed under the foreword of Kamala Harris’s book, and that the Socialists were ready — fireworks and champagne in hand — to celebrate the victory of the Democratic candidate, showed that Rama was preparing for a guaranteed fourth term. If Harris had won, Edi Rama’s campaign would look entirely different today. But in Tirana, those who defeated Kamala Harris and the Soros family have now arrived. One of them, Chris LaCivita, made it clear from the very first day:

You cannot be a puppet of Soros in Tirana and a friend of America at the same time.

Even though Rama tries to brush it off — calling him “Latif” — the fact that he cannot go a day without mentioning him, often in long, rambling sentences, shows that LaCivita is more than a sheriff or a Latif to him: he is a discomfort, a sore spot.

This was also evident from the “Brancaleone chorus” of his media supporters after PD signed a contract with Trump's lawyer, Carlos Trujillo. More than the contract itself, what seems to bother them is the fact that it wasn’t done behind closed doors — it was declared openly, with real names, in full legality.

Of course, Rama doesn’t mention Trump directly — he made that mistake only once, when Trump was still a candidate — but he isn’t happy with his administration. His efforts to find a "Charlie" even among the Republicans have failed.

This is what drives him crazy about LaCivita and the Trump-connected relationships with PD. Rama is used to, for a long time, being the sole negotiator and payer of the internationals. It is this awareness of his impotence that now makes him sound so powerless — as if Chris LaCivita had come not to PD headquarters (“SHQUP”), but into his craftman's cave in the bunker in Surrel.