Berisha not invited to the reception for the new U.S. ambassador, analyst reveals the backstage: He got the visa with millions of dollars, but

Analyst Ergys Mërtiri has said that the Democratic Party (DP) and DP leader Sali Berisha are the main cause why Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Socialist Party (SP) are today in power with 83 parliamentary mandates.

Mërtiri also commented on the roundtable called yesterday by Berisha with the DP’s traditional allies.

Calling the roundtable ridiculous, Mërtiri said the meeting was attended by a group of old men who, according to him, stay at the head of opposition political parties only for personal gain.

“Rama now has 83 mandates because of the opposition. Because they made an electoral code that gave Edi Rama mandates for free, so that he now does whatever he wants. So what standing does the opposition have to speak now? The roundtable the opposition held was a ridiculous roundtable. One says ‘let’s take the protest into our hands’. As if the protest is there thanks to Berisha’s charity in allowing a protest. The biggest problem is that the opposition is unreformed. That they don’t say. Yesterday’s roundtable was a roundtable of old men. Just like Berisha, the others don’t leave their parties either. That was the protest of the vegetative opposition that sleeps there and feeds on the crumbs the DP gives it. The real opposition is in the square,” Mërtiri said, among other things, as a guest on Report TV.

Mërtiri sharpened his rhetoric against Berisha, saying that “the old man over 80 is holding the opposition hostage”. According to Mërtiri, the DP entering elections with Sali Berisha as leader is like going into a race without an alternative.

“The people in the square have come out to bring down Rama and Berisha. Berisha says ‘you put forward candidates against Rama so that I can come’. The protest can put forward candidates against Rama and Berisha. The 80-something-year-old man is holding the opposition hostage. Going into elections in these conditions is going into elections without an alternative. People are devastated because they no longer have anything to choose,” Mërtiri added.

In conclusion, Mërtiri commented on Berisha’s absence from the ceremony organized by the U.S. Embassy in Tirana, for the reception of Ambassador Eric Wendt. Mërtiri said Berisha did not receive an invitation, since, according to him, he continues to be non grata from the U.S.

“I said it when Berisha went to America, that this is not a removal of the ‘non grata’. This is simply Berisha’s achievement in getting a visa through millions of dollars. But this is not a removal of the non grata, because removing the non grata would be reflected on the State Department’s official website and would be followed by a thaw in the political ice between the DP and American politics. The fact that not even the ambassador calls him to his own celebration shows that Berisha continues to have frozen relations with the U.S. Berisha continues to be non grata in the U.S., Britain, but apparently also in Germany, since the German ambassador didn’t meet him either,” Mërtiri concluded.