By Lorenc Vangjeli
It was a public secret that everyone knew about, but no one spoke of. The fierce hostility between the prime minister and the mayor of Tirana seemed to come out of nowhere and opened a new front of war. This time within the Socialist Party (PS). One side of the trench sits on the second floor of the Prime Ministry building, while the other is locked up in the cells of the Fier prison on the first floor. Edi Rama and Erion Veliaj, the pair of early political brothers, have now declared war on each other. The former even threatens him with “a 100-year prison sentence for undermining the constitutional order,” while the latter challenges him to produce the evidence, and to run away if he dares!
The public debate that followed the declaration of war between two socialists in trouble focused mostly on “side” details, on matters of form, strangely avoiding the approach to the core of this curious new story. Was it proper for the justice minister to visit a detainee in his cell, could he enter there late in the evening, was he there to convey an ultimatum from the prime minister? Is Veliaj lying when he claims political blackmail, or is the minister denying it and swearing on both worlds, here and there, that he went there as a friend? All of these are indeed important questions that necessarily require answers. And the missing transparency. But they are still far from the real significance of the act. It is an act of war! And to understand what this means, the declaration of war must be viewed through the eyes of both challengers.
Rama is determined at all costs to control the Tirana municipality. In the short term, during the remaining months of Veliaj’s mandate. And in the long term, he wants to win it at all costs. The polls he is fixated on are far from the optimism those same polls showed in 2023, when Veliaj triumphed over Këlliçi in the race for Tirana. A losing scenario for the socialists in the capital, in the worst case, would be the blackest omen for the general elections, whenever they may be held in Albania. So Rama wants, if not to remove him, to neutralize Veliaj’s possible influence in the Tirana municipality. And it doesn’t end there. Beyond understandable paranoia, or a malicious service to his paranoia, people close to Rama are treating as a fact a double and not minor role of Veliaj in instigating the protests in Tirana. As both inspirer and indirect financier of them. “He is undermining the constitutional order,” Rama is reported to have threatened and warned. In the same way that another well-known figure, a resident now in the cells of the Fier prison, has been warned about the possibility of having a hand “in inspiring and financing the protests in Tirana.”
Veliaj has two other priorities. The first, short-term and urgent, is to secure his trial in freedom. A request that has been stubbornly and unjustly refused by the justice system in the country. The time when he will undoubtedly obtain this right in Strasbourg seems very distant to him, and the sacrifice of waiting seems far too excessive. His other, long-term priority is a comeback with a project and a central role in the country’s politics. Something that is not only prevented by the closed door of his cell and the unknowns arising from the judicial process. The phantom of Fatos Nano, who left Tirana as a prisoner and returned as the country’s prime minister, regularly visits him in the solitude of his cell.
But before this fantastic leap, with many obstacles along the way, the main one bears the name of Edi Rama. The very man who brought him into politics and gave him the initial fuel for his career. An enemy of the opposition, an enemy of Rama, an enemy of the overwhelming majority of Albania’s media elite, Veliaj sees as allies in this venture, in what seems impossible, only his young age, the magic of protest and the possible influence of former common friends. Mainly from certain segments with visible and hidden power in the United States. Put bluntly, Veliaj seeks to take Rama’s place in the “affection” of American Democrats, who view the prime minister’s obsession with securing closeness to President Trump with suspicion.
The only way to do this is for Veliaj himself to determine his fate. Will he keep behaving as a victim of the judicial system, including the political backstage that may inspire it, or will he wage political battles? Will he complain about the transfer, the ventilation, the missing visits, the unsuitable toilet in the cell, or will he identify the obstacles on his path to return? He has now understood that the hopes he had pinned on the “relationship forged over difficult years” with Rama were merely a naive illusion. In politics there are no permanent loves, only temporary interests.
Just like in an old tabletop game with obligatory moves and set rules, the only path for Veliaj passes through the painful calvary of challenging his former brother. With whom they are now once again in brotherhood, but no longer as Edi and little Eri, but as Cain and Abel. Both are witnesses to each other of the time they offered their common God, power, almost the same gifts, but which God “rewarded” them in different and extreme ways. Jealousy, envy and revenge are now the knives, but also their shields. It will go even worse tomorrow! Because there is no more fierce enmity than the hatred born of misfortune out of a friendship forged in happy times!