Albania’s PM Edi Rama has become the star of the show in the 23th edition of “Symi Symposium” organized and monitored by Greek former PM George Papandreou in Athens on Wednesday when he praised himself in his own way while telling a joke during his speech which is below:
“I am the best prime minister among painters and the best painter of prime ministers. I am unique here. (Former US president) Bush tried, but he did not succeed; he did not succeed here. You know that here in the Balkans we need to say that we are the best,” said Rama.
But the Rama ‘show’ continued when he compared the failure of Albania to start the EU accession talks with weddings. “The bride did not come to the first wedding. The second wedding. She did not come again and there is no more preparation for a third wedding; go to hell! So, we cannot continue with expectations, because it is a whole year with expectations,” Rama said, blaming Brussels for failure of the launch of accession talks between Albania and the Union.
As he said that the EU needed the Balkans like the latter the Union, PM Rama referred to third actors in the region. The excerpt of his statement on this is below:
“Of course, there are third actors. The Chinese with whom we had a very happy marriage and a very bitter divorce said “we have Albania, we have all of Europe, we do not need others” because of its strategic position. So, having this area open, with people who are disappointed and the Chinese coming offering what they call “easy money”, but which is not easy after all. Because look at Montenegro and North Macedonia which should think about how to get out of the crazy debts with Chinese money. Russia is here, too. Turkey in a way, but Turkey is a completely different story, in my view. I do not see Turkey as a third actor.”
As a matter of fact, Rama has systematically used the card of the Russian and Chinese presence in the region as pressure towards Brussels. But real political life shows that in the case of China his government has normal relations and two of his main collaborators, the Socialist Party number two, Taulant Balla and Agriculture Minister Milva Ekonomi praised recently the level of Albanian-Chinese cooperation, seeing new perspectives. Also official Tirana has been grateful to China for its aid at the outbreak of the Covid pandemic when significant amounts of medical supplies rushed from China when EU was disorinted ./ argumentum.al
