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OP-ED

Industrial-Scale Kleptocracy: The Rise of Albania’s "Super-Electors"

Politiko 2026-04-22 16:16:52
Industrial-Scale Kleptocracy: The Rise of Albania’s

Edi Rama is now living out his own jokes and provocations in reverse. There was a time when he wielded an axe to cut the "Gordian knot" of a wooden utility pole—leaning like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on a roadside where he intended to lay asphalt and line the pedestrian path with red plum trees. Yet, he has spent the last decade planting red and grey towers in every spot that once held a modest parking lot, a crooked pole, or a "broken-hearted" Tirana villa from the Zog era. Rama’s axe has been in a race with the Lictor’s fasces; but while the Italian influence laid out a symmetrical "T" that still makes the capital bearable, Rama’s axe has risen vertically in the form of skyscrapers—a fellatio performed by the former artist upon the former city.

Another of his signature tropes centers on money. "There is no mother’s son—or son of a whore—who can find their own money in my pockets," goes the phrase, serving as both an accusation and a defense. Rama has constantly played the role of the artist in love with his work and himself, someone supposedly indifferent to wealth.

His political legacy, however, tells a different story. He deepened hedonism, multiplied the number of greedy plutocrats surrounding him, and turned Albania into a nation obsessed with cash. Wealth at any cost, by any means—a monetary Machiavellianism where the parvenus grew rich overnight while genuine heritage was thinned out in favor of a "Year Zero" system. An Albania built like this cannot think about education, security, culture, or social cohesion; it thinks only of constructions, resorts, concerts, and mass tourism—all facades of a "Potemkin village."

This culture of a monetary boom created a new class of officials and power-brokers whose wealth grew exponentially. This mirrored the realization that elections are no longer a race, but "booty" that goes to the strongest—to those with the most resources.

This class can be dubbed the Super-Electors: a special corps that manages a massive electoral infrastructure from A to Z. The task of this special unit is threefold: To create the election "war chest; To manage the voter database; To run a simulation-manipulation system that makes voting look like an election.

To ensure this rot didn't break under its own weight, Rama positioned himself at the helm. He worked to empower these individuals within key institutions while simultaneously crafting a defensive narrative of "public servants" who live humbly. A prime illustration of this is Mirlinda Karcanaj, who, according to Rama, lived in a rented apartment and previously stayed with her parents in a communist-era building—the kind of "heart-wrenching" tales he loves to spin.

However, a seizure by SPAK (Special Anti-Corruption Structure) revealed a different reality. Officials from AKSHI (National Agency for Information Society), including Rama’s "ascetic" director, had accumulated assets worth tens of millions of euros. And remember: this is only the portion that was discovered. Imagine how many more millions likely sit in offshore banks, in foreign real estate under aliases, or in diamonds and gold bars—assets easy to possess and hide.

This reveals more than just the hypocrisy of "suffering champagne socialists." It exposes a systemic theft on an industrial scale that cannot be brushed aside with quips about those "eating plums behind my back" or similar nonsense.

Rama’s strategy has been clear: the creation of such massive personal and group wealth that it makes the systematic manipulation of elections possible. Even in the event of an upset or loss, this wealth is intended to serve as a base to make life impossible for political opponents and to engineer a swift return to power.

This means that Rama’s primary concern during these 13 years in power has not been the State, but the Deep State.

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