Rama of the Dead Army

Alfred Lela

Edi Rama Appears to Have Entered the Final Phase of Power: Rage Before the Fall

In a post on X, a forum he chooses for his most ceremonial proclamations, imitating Western leaders who use this network – somewhat more political than the entertainment-driven Facebook and Instagram – the Prime Minister signaled defiance in the face of a SPAK move against the parliamentary mandate of his deputy, B. Balluku.

With today’s stance, Edi Rama marks a third type of behavior in relation to the Special Prosecution (SPAK) on parliamentary immunity: first, obstructive (but negotiated) in the Tahiri case; second, unconditionally supportive in the Berisha/Ahmetaj cases; and now, outright obstruction in the Balluku case.

He secured a tense agreement in exchange for the silence of his Interior Minister; as for Ahmetaj, he let go quickly – most likely as a “sacrificial lamb,” a trophy for SPAK to enhance its authority, and in exchange for not being personally touched.

In the Balluku case, we are dealing with a Rama whose face has changed completely in relation to the “new justice.” The first suspicion raised by this sharp turn of the Prime Minister is the alarm of a possible personal implication. This can arise for two reasons: Either Balluku “talks” to save herself, or in exchange for immunity (a repentant collaborator); or, through the unfolding of the tracks and the contextual and factual links in the file, his role in the corrupt affairs for which Balluku is indicted begins to emerge.

Against the second hypothesis, Rama himself seems to argue with his own past statements. Remember that, at the Socialist Party Assembly two years ago, he declared with a peculiar pride and vanity that he was not troubled by the imprisonment of his subordinates because “the Socialist Party has 800,000 members.” Edi Rama was reusing, in not-so-symbolic fashion, the old communist postulate: “one falls, thousands rise.”
This is to say that with Balluku’s fall, he does not worry about the name or the political legacy of the government and the SP. He sees and experiences the idea of power as a personal fate and a personal will. In this sense, he is right when he says that he is not a politician.

The political end is usually the beginning of agony in the relationship between the leader and his creations, whether human or institutional. Rama opened the tap of this agony with Arben Ahmetaj, the first deputy who left Albania seeking political asylum. As with every first blow, he managed to contain it, and, carried away by arrogance, thought he could do the same with Erion Veliaj, his “political son.”

Despite the mastery he attributes to himself – and that many others echo – the propaganda management of the “Veliaj affair” was scandalous. Unfocused, with overlapping and non-strategic messaging, this was the moment when Rama, in his attempt to create events and get ahead of them, ended up trailing behind. Veliaj, even though crushed and betrayed, had kept outside the noose a few media voices, nurtured in the lap of favors and friendships, which offered him just enough public protection to remain politically alive.

Rama is once again being placed at the tail end of events when it comes to his relationship with the justice system. With the arrogance of someone who, before being a politician or statesman, seeks History through vanity, Rama has often declared that SPAK was not made by the Americans, but by him and the Socialist Party. Today, rumors and gossip say quite the opposite. Whatever the truth – whether he built it himself and the creature is now turning against him, or whether it was built by “his Americans” (of the Biden–Blinken–Kim era) – Edi Rama seems destined to speak a different language, in a different tone and rhythm, about “his justice.” The Americans are no longer the same, but karma remains unchanged.

He now has to negotiate the limits of his power. If he hands over Belinda without a fight, in return, she may show him the guillotine. If he does the opposite, everyone will read it as a fit of rage. Faced with a new kind of war, where the enemy is not political, and the method is not “capturing the king,” but rather “scorched earth” around him, a confused Edi Rama will drift about, trying to make sense of the new political reality into which a Zeus-like greed has plunged him to create everything and swallow everything.

Like a monarch with a fallen court, he must now choose between a comic fate and a tragic one.