By Ervin Goci, University of Tirana.
At a time when the world is being torn apart by deep geopolitical and cultural divides, the ruling class in Albania has found a remarkable sense of harmony. Politicians across the divide all seem to be going out of their way to showcase their deep admiration for the new US administration. Rather than clashing over our innumerable pressing domestic issues, the country’s two main opposing political parties — one center-right, called ‘democratic’, and the other left, even called ‘socialist’— seem only to clash over who can fawn more over American President Donald Trump.
On one side, we have Albania’s Democratic Party (Albanian: Partia Demokratike e Shqipërisë, PDSH or PD) which holds high the flag of conservatism. With Trump’s coming to power, their populist ideology has rapidly advanced further to the right, to the point that the party’s leader, Sali Berisha, now calls himself the “New Sheriff in Town,” promising a new law for the de-‘Sorosization’ of Albania with penalties for those who push pro-LGBTQI+ agendas in education, while declaring a war on « woke culture. » Berisha presents himself as victim, playing up his political ‘assassination’ while drawing parallels with the American President. But, above all, for the current 2025 election campaign, the Democratic Party has hired one of Trump’s former campaign managers, introducing the slogan « Make Albania Great Again,” directly mirroring the US’s “MAGA — Make America Great Again” sentiment.
On the other side, current Prime Minister Edi Rama, chairman of the Socialist Party (Albanian: Partia Socialiste e Shqipërisë, PS or PSSh), has exceptionally granted full development rights of Albania’s Sazan Island to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, ignoring civilian backlash and public consultation. Rama has begun a pilgrimage across Europe to tell Europeans what a blessing it has been that Trump was elected US President. In mid-February, Rama went to the Munich Security Conference and told European leaders that they did not understand how lucky they were that Trump was re-elected; that the American President was a generous gift from God because his presence would serve to wake up Europe. He repeated the same message for the Spanish media outlet “La Razon,” adding that an internal danger to Europe from immigrants should not be ignored — using verbatim the rhetoric of US Republicans about immigrants – which US Vice President Vance also strongly emphasized at the Munich Conference.
This comes as a shock since one can recall that earlier, in 2016, Rama explicitly said in two media appearances that Trump was a threat to Albanian-American relations, as well as a threat to America itself. Now, he seems to have changed tuned, reflecting the US discourse around the “danger of immigrants,” contradicting his earlier statements on Albania, saying: “we are a nation of immigrants.” Thus, the two political and ideological opposing leaders of Albania both pray and thank God that President Trump is in power. While some smaller political parties continue to fight on behalf of citizens, with regard to the two main parties, now the primary issue of debate is TikTok being shut down. Rama’s SP government says they will ban the social media platform domestically, and Berisha’s DP opposition says they would work immediately to reinstate it upon coming to power. Concerningly, neither side talks about Albania’s economic structures or the oligarchies that have taken over the country. We hear nothing about the challenges tied to over-tourism and environmental degradation, the geopolitical pressure on Kosovo, relationships with Europe, NATO, emigration, education, social services — all pressing issues that citizens would expect be discussed in the face of upcoming elections. Albania’s government has instead become transfixed on impressing the United States, and if it had the surface area and close geographic position of Greenland, we would not be surprised if our two main parties joined forces to propose Albania become the 52nd American state – since Canada has already been unilaterally earmarked as the 51st.
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Ervin Goci is a researcher at the Department of Journalism and Communication, Faculty of History and Philology of the University of Tirana. His research focuses on communication theories, theories on public space and community engagement.