Peter Lucas in the Boston Herald: "Rama Government", the best that money can buy

A proposed billion-dollar luxury resort development by President Trump’s family along the ecologically protected pristine Albanian coast has thrown the country into turmoil.

Thousands of pro-environment protesters have been  demonstrating for days against the government of Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, a Trump stooge who supports the project, in a development that threatens to bring his government down.

“There is no chance for this investment to stop as long as I am here,” Rama said, as Tirana police battled demonstrators outside of his Tirana office chanting that he should reign.

And it all began with a chance encounter by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who was sailing on a yacht along the Albanian coast and came across an uninhabited island and a pristine Adriatic Sea coastline.

She acted as though she had discovered America.

The place is Sazan Island, a bird sanctuary, off the coast of the seaside city of Vlorë. It was occupied by the Italians after Italy invaded Albania in 1939, and later by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The main reason it is unoccupied is that there is little water there and an untold amount of military ordnance lying around.

“We were on a friend’s boat,” Ivanka Trump recalled, “and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”

She was so captivated that, after she and her husband Jared Kushner built a relationship with Rama, she got Kushner and Affinity Partners, his private equity firm, to propose a $1.6 billion development plan to turn the island and the environmentally protected coastline into a luxury resort haven for millionaires and billionaires.

Being the daughter of the president helped.

It is open to question what deals were made or what strings were pulled. Political corruption — bribes, payoffs, kickbacks and the general criminal activity of many politicians in Albania — are commonplace.

Tirana, the capital, has become the Balkan center for laundering drug money even as the country is one of the poorest in Europe.

It is expected that the development will not only wreck the environmentally protected coast but will be a financial windfall for politicians on the take, of which there are many in Albania.

If Ivanka Trump expected praise from the people for her proposal she was badly misinformed.

She is being mocked by demonstrators holding signs reading, “Ivanka, go home” and “Albania is not for sale.”

The Albanian protestors and environmentalists call their movement the “Flamingo Revolution” in honor of the magnificent pink flamingos they say will be destroyed, along with other species, if the project goes through.

They have demonstrated holding cardboard flamingo cutouts and flamingo balloons, turning the environmental movement into a political one, or a combination of both.

The coastline region to be developed is the world’s largest breeding ground of the majestic flamingos, not to mention home to some 200 migratory bird species, pelicans, monk seals and sea turtles.

What the development would do, in effect, is replace 10,000 flamingos with 10,000 hotel rooms and villas.

While demonstrators have clashed with police in Tirana, they have also fought a losing battle with security guards along the once-protected coastline, where bulldozers, excavators and other heavy machinery are destroying sand dunes by opening access routes to the long-protected wildlife habitats.

Without outside intervention like, say, from President Trump, it is a doomsday scenario for the coastline, the wildlife, the environmentalists and the Albanian people. But that won’t happen.

Albania may not be for sale. Just don’t tell that to Ivanka, Jared and the other rich foreigners who aim to buy up and destroy the pristine coastline. It is just the best government money can buy.

Farewell to flamingos.

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas has roamed the Albanian coastline on numerous occasions. He can be reached at: [email protected]