Albania’s Opposition Backs Actor-Activist for Tirana Mayor

Florjan Binaj during protests in Tirana in 2022. Photo: Nensi Bogdani/BIRN. Sali Berisha, leader of Democratic Party, Albania’s main opposition force, said on Monday that the party will back Florjan Binaj, an actor and activist, in the campaign to be Tirana’s mayor in November’s election. Berisha said that “we are united in support for the well-known artist, the distinguished personality in art, the fighter for the just causes of Albanian citizens, the talented communicator Mr Florian Binaj”. Binaj is a well-known actor, and famous for imitating Prime Minister Edi Rama on the TV comedy sketch show Portokalli. He is also an activist, and one of the main figures in the 2022 citizen protests in Tirana against government price rises for bread, gas, oil and electricity. He was also one of the lead activists involved in environmental campaigning to protect the river Vjosa, one of the last wild rivers in Europe, which is now a national park. In an interview with BIRN in 2022, Binaj said: “Today we have an anaemic and asphyxiated society, a repressed and submissive youth, and a bought-out and emigrated elite.” Binaj is expected to run against Ogerta Manastirliu, a former health and education minister, who is the ruling Socialist Party candidate for mayor of Tirana. The mayoral byelection is bring held after the arrest of the previous Tirana mayor, Erion Veliaj – a leading ally of Prime Minister Rama – on corruption charges in February. Tirana is not considered an easy field for the opposition, even though voters there in the last parliamentary elections gave 52 per cent of their votes to the opposition. The city is believed to lean towards Rama’s governing Socialists, who have won every election battle there, except one, since 2000. The one they lost, in 2011, was due largely to the unconventional means used by the then right-wing Democratic Party government to win. Socialist Party power in the city was strengthened during 2015’s territorial reform, which extended the authority of the municipality to the surrounding countryside. Historically, the party that controls the central government in Albania wins local elections. Socialist control over the city since 2015 hasn’t always run smoothly, however, with claims of mismanagement, unfulfilled promises, perceived corruption and then the arrest of mayor Veliaj.