The Monopoly

The American ambassador will not sit with Sali Berisha. He sits with Berisha’s deputies, who say SPAK must be protected. Hours later Berisha calls SPAK the sworn enemy of pluralism. One party, two voices, and the embassies listen only to the one they like.

the Editorial Board

On Saturday morning in Tirana the American ambassador, Eric Wendt, and Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Dick Durbin met the opposition. Across the table sat three deputies of the Democratic Party: Jorida Tabaku, Oerd Bylykbashi and Ivi Kaso. The party’s chairman was not in the room. Wendt has been at his post for two weeks and has not met him once.

The same morning the delegation was at the Special Prosecution, the ambassador’s second visit in five days, to see its head, Klodian Braho, and the director of the National Bureau of Investigation, Joni Keta.

Later that day Sali Berisha gave his view of that building. SPAK is “a sworn enemy of political pluralism” (armik i betuar i pluralizmit politik). It “amnesties electoral crime in the name of the interests of its party” (amniston krimin elektoral në emër të interesave të partisë së tij). He addressed it, he said, to all who visit there.

The rest of Albanian politics has had to choose. The majority carried the justice reform and cannot disown it. The newer opposition parties and the protest in the street attack the government and count on the prosecutors. Berisha takes all of them at once: the Prime Minister and his ministers as authors of electoral crime, the prosecution that arrested the mayor of the capital as the government’s own party, and the foreign guests as people in need of his correction, in one answer. He has a monopoly on it, and a reason. SPAK indicted him in September 2024 and his case is before the Special Court.

The Democratic Party the ambassador met speaks another language. Jorida Tabaku has said she has “never agreed with the attacks on SPAK” (nuk kam qenë asnjëherë dakord me sulmet ndaj SPAK). She told the Assembly that while the government attacks the prosecution, “the rest of politics seeks to intimidate SPAK” (pjesa tjetër e politikës kërkon të intimidojë SPAK) so that the accusations against it go uninvestigated. When a Socialist mayor turned on his prosecutors, she said not even communist politicians spoke that way. This year she carried amendments in the joint committee with the European Parliament to shield SPAK from any political interference. This is the Democratic Party every embassy in Tirana hears, in good English, all day long.

Either Tabaku does not mean it or Berisha does not. And if she does mean it, she owes her voters the reason she still stands behind a chairman who says the opposite. Planned or not, it works as a division of labour. Tabaku and her colleagues take the embassies, the visiting senators and the committee rooms in Brussels, where the Democratic Party defends the prosecutors. Berisha takes the microphone at home, where the prosecutors are the enemy. The party collects the credit abroad for one position and the benefit at home of the other.

A division of labour needs a customer, and here the hypocrisy belongs to the internationals. In May 2021 Washington designated Berisha for significant corruption and barred him from the United States. Last month he was in the United States, sitting with a member of Congress. On Saturday the American ambassador in his own capital met his subordinates and walked around him. If Washington still holds what it said in 2021, it should say so, and say what follows for the party that keeps him as chairman. If it does not, it should sit across from him and tell him to his face what it thinks of “sworn enemy.”

The embassies get a presentable opposition to photograph and are spared the real one. The deputies stay respectable in both places. Berisha, kept out of the room, owes the room nothing. The monopoly is his.

Ambassador Wendt has two honest options. Meet the chairman, or say why not. And the next time three Democratic deputies tell a visiting senator how much they care for the independence of SPAK, they should be asked to say it again in Albanian, at party headquarters, with the chairman in the room.