By Gresa Hasa*
In a carefully staged spectacle perfectly suited to Albania’s semi-authoritarian leader Edi Rama, the country once again drew international attention by introducing, for the first time worldwide, a minister created by artificial intelligence (AI). Named Diella, after the Albanian word “diell,” meaning sun, she appears in a traditional Albanian costume, a strikingly banal fusion of modern technology and folkloric imagery that underscores the absurdity of Rama’s showmanship and his fondness for performative politics over substantive governance.
Following the May 11 parliamentary elections, which secured the Socialist Party (SP) an overwhelming supermajority, in an awkward gathering of the SP’s National Assembly on September 11, Prime Minister Edi Rama presented his new cabinet. Aside from Diella—whose novelty is debatable, given that Rama’s ministers often operate like his personal automatons—the new cabinet features only one genuinely new face: Evis Sala, a medical doctor with an academic background and experience in managing a healthcare clinic in Italy, now appointed to lead the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
In power without interruption since 2013, and now openly mocking the concept of electoral alternation as a “fairytale,” Rama, entering his fourth term, has again recycled the same faithful and familiar faces across ministries. Notably, Belinda Balluku was named Deputy Prime Minister while retaining her role as Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, and Niko Peleshi, former Deputy Prime Minister and two-time minister in Rama’s previous cabinets, was appointed Speaker of Parliament.
Party loyalists who have managed to avoid jail for corruption or money laundering were assembled two weeks ago standing only a few meters from Rama—but all utterly confused and clueless about what was happening. It is typical of Rama to appoint the new cabinet without prior notice or consultation. It reflects his style of governance which is designed to keep those around him in a constant state of dependence and uncertainty, effectively bending institutional procedures to serve his personal whims.
The old-new ministers sat there, tense and unsure whether they would be rewarded, cast aside, or simply ignored, many upon hearing their name shocked, or even choked up.
Against this backdrop, the debut of an AI minister is merely the extension of a leadership style based on authoritarian control and manipulation. Rama asserts that Diella will oversee public tenders, a sector deeply entrenched in corruption and dominated by the country’s political elite and oligarchy. According to Albania’s Prime Minister, this AI-driven oversight will ensure complete transparency and serve as a tool to combat corruption. This would be hopeful if Albania were a thriving democracy, but since the country has effectively come to resemble a single-party state over the past decade—with no opposition, nearly all state institutions captured, and a media constantly under attack by the ruling party—the situation provokes skepticism.
Placing blind trust in AI is, at best, naive, and at worst, a cunning maneuver, designed to manipulate and obscure real power. In a functional democracy, there would be regulations in place, such as independent professional audits to examine the AI’s decisions and how it was developed, including the criteria used to award a public procurement to one company over another, or to justify a specific price.
The AI can be intentionally biased toward favored companies, especially since the algorithm can replicate and amplify previous patterns of favoritism, therefore reinforcing the interests of political and economic elites instead of providing objective and fair results. This would make corruption only harder and more complicated to detect, rather than impossible, as Rama claims.
In such a context, the Albanian government could easily deflect responsibility by presenting the outcomes as purely objective and mathematically determined, or by blaming an ‘algorithmic glitch’. Consequently, corruption would be highly effective, and patronage networks could operate with even greater efficiency, hidden behind the façade of transparency and innovation.
Albania is a country where the rule of law is weak . Checks and balances are largely non-existent, and this deficit becomes even more acute when dealing with something as novel and poorly understood by the public, as AI. With data control monopolized by the regime and no independent watchdogs to scrutinize how the AI operates, Albania’s fragile democracy faces a direct and serious threat. This is evident even in the appointment of Diella: made without constitutional basis—Albania has no legal provisions for an AI minister—without public debate, and presented as yet another one of Rama’s surprise moves, reflecting a pattern of stubborn disregard for democratic norms while exploiting emerging technologies to entrench power.
As an EU candidate country, Albania is obliged to align its policies with the EU acquis, including regulations governing AI. A European Commission (EC) spokesperson underscored this in an official correspondence with the Albanian online fact-checking outlet ‘Faktoje,’ encouraging the country to comply with the EU AI Act. Failure to do so could jeopardize the country’s EU integration process.
Officially known as Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU AI Act was adopted in March 2024 and came into force in August of the same year. Covering all types of AI across a wide range of sectors, the Act provides precisely the safeguards Albania currently lacks: a framework to ensure transparency and accountability in AI deployment—something far more reliable than Rama’s pompous declarations.
Until that happens, Diella remains nothing but Rama’s personal doll—a tool to further enhance his propaganda and serve the regime he represents, instead of the citizens of Albania, democracy at large, or the country’s EU integration process.
