Salianji Challenges Berisha Directly in Kukës, Says PD Leader Cannot Mobilize Democrats

The Newsroom (Tirana)

Ervin Salianji, the former Democratic Party MP who intends to run for the party’s chairmanship, used a meeting with local members in Kukës on Sunday to deliver his sharpest public challenge yet to the man who has led Albania’s main opposition force for most of its existence.

Speaking ahead of internal party elections scheduled for 23 May, Salianji described Sali Berisha, 82, as politically exhausted, designated persona non grata by Washington, and no longer capable of mobilizing either the party’s base or the wider electorate against Prime Minister Edi Rama. He called on Berisha to allow a genuinely open internal race and to accept its consequences.

Berisha has been under Section 7031(c) designations from the United States Department of State since May 2021, for what Washington described at the time as involvement in significant corruption. The designation bars him and members of his immediate family from entering the United States. The United Kingdom announced a parallel measure in July 2022. Both remain in force.

Salianji’s break with the PD leadership is now close to complete. He told the Kukës audience that stepping away from what he called a thirty six year politics of mud, contempt, and internal targeting had been one of his best decisions, and acknowledged that he himself should have spoken out against the party’s drift much earlier. The PD, he said, is a mattress sliding toward an abyss.

His critique rested on electoral arithmetic as much as on rhetoric. The operative question for the current leadership, Salianji argued, is how it plans to bring more than 800,000 democrats to the ballot box against Rama. The current answer, he suggested, is to tell Albanians every week that this is the final stretch, the last kilometer, and to produce nothing. When PD leaders ask where the figures are who can challenge the government, he said, they are asking the wrong question. The figures are whoever the democrats vote for.

He also sought to reframe the question of opposition itself. The role of holding the government to account, he argued, is now being performed more effectively by SPAK, the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime, than by the Democratic Party. The claim is pointed in the Albanian context. SPAK is the EU backed anticorruption body whose indictments and arrests have driven much of the political pressure on the Rama government over the past two years, including proceedings involving senior figures from the ruling party.

Two internal branch elections held over the weekend gave Salianji’s thesis outside support. In Pukë, the chairmanship went to a candidate the PD headquarters had not backed. In Krujë, where Aulon Kalaja was elected branch chairman, an outgoing member left the structure immediately, calling the race a farce and accusing the headquarters envoy, Flamur Noka, of intimidating local democrats. Both results cut against the picture of a unified party on a clean march to 23 May.

The backdrop is a street strategy that is no longer producing the mobilization Berisha needs. Friday’s protest in Tirana, run under a new police protocol, ended with eleven militants arrested with molotovs in their hands and with open criticism from within the PD base telling Berisha to change course. The political analyst Nexhmedin Spahiu has argued that the current PD strategy is no longer aimed at overthrowing Rama but at preserving the party’s monopoly on opposition against newer political formations.

Whether the 23 May race will take place on equal terms remains in question. Salianji has argued in recent interviews that there is still no verification commission for candidate registrations, no voter list, and no equal television time, while Berisha continues to use the party headquarters, its staff, and its financial resources as an incumbent. The PD has not responded publicly to those procedural complaints.

Separately on Sunday, Spahiu forecast that Salianji is preparing to leave the PD altogether and to form a new party with the internal rebels, should the 23 May process remain closed to him.