SP Minister Frustrated by President’s Worry over Albanians’ Saga in Southern Checkpoints with Greece

TIRANA – In a bitter tit-for-tat reaction Defence Minister Olta Xhacka has criticized President Ilir Meta for his concern regarding the grave situation created at the border check points with Greece in Kakavija and Kapshtica, southern Albania.
Seized in the humanitarian crisis at the border crossings with Greece where thousands upon thousands of travellers have been stranded since many days President Meta called on the government not to treat citizens as people without motherland and state.
This angered Minister Xhacka, considered as the closest collaborator of PM Edi Rama, who told the head of state that those citizens are neither without a homeland nor without a state in a post on social networks on Sunday.
“It is really unfortunate that instead of an encouragement, and why not an expression of gratitude for the work being done in such difficult conditions, you find the most inappropriate words for a head of state,” said Ms. Xhacka praising the work of boys and girls, men and women in army, police or health uniforms, who are with the stranded people in this situation really very hard.
The Minister, considered a hardliner in the ruling Socialist Party, was sarcastic with Meta telling him she couldn’t find the meaning, much less the understanding, that the President of the Republic attacks the government and the state talking about homeless citizens in these conditions when humanity is a minimum without which it really makes no sense to talk.
Video footages of local TVs and other media outlets show thousands upon thousands of citizens among whom children and elderly sizzling in the torching weather in endless queues in an effort to cross the border where they are blocked in miserable conditions since many days.
Madam Xhacka and PM Rama started to speak of the situation on Saturday due to the Biblical caravan of cars created at the border crossings since many days.
She didn’t make any comment on a 10-year old child who lost his life in the chaotic situation hit by an ambulance, a tragic event which has triggered strong anti- government reactions.
President advised the current government for contacts with Greece and only in function of an immediate solution warning against acts of force as unacceptable. /argumentum.al