Prime Ministers of Albania

Ahead of parliamentary elections in June, Prime Minister Edi Rama has been taking to Facebook to say he will help people to find jobs, but he hasn't delivered on his employment promise from the previous polls four years ago, economic experts told BIRN.

Albania's Minister of Justice, Ylli Manjani - from the junior coalition party, the Socialist Movement for Integration, LSI - has accused Prime Minister Edi Rama of sacking him for speaking out against corruption.

The Authority for Information on Former Communist Police Secret Files, which was established at the beginning of January, has started to receive the first requests from Albanian institutions looking to verify the pasts of people seeking promotion to senior positions or receiving medals from the state.

The unexpected visit of CIA director John Brennan to Tirana has prompted claims that  besides Islamic radicalism, concerns about Russian influence in Albania were also on the agenda.

An Administrative Court in Tirana has ordered Albania's main intelligence agency, SHISH, to de-classify reports of the former Communist-era Sigurimi secret police and its data on the number of people kept under surveillance during the last decade of the Communist regime.  

Albanian opposition MPs refused to take part in a vote on a key law sought by the EU on Thursday, after accusing Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama of deliberately turning the country into a "narco state".

Former Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha has blamed the unmaking of a continental shelf pact between Albania and Greece five years ago on outside intervention.

"I am saying with full certainty that you did so in the interests of a third party," Berisha said in reference to current Prime Minister Edi Rama and his government.

Samizdat has published a book “Sacrifice“ by Edi Rama, who was one of the protagonists of bringing down communist regime.

He was elected Tirana Mayor by a convincing majority as he based his program on the clear vision that the city can and have to solve massive usurpations and devastations.

Ben Blushi, one of the most outspoken MPs in Albania's ruling Socialist Party, on Friday said he was quitting the party.

Over the last three years he has become a persistent critic of party leader and Prime Minister Edi Rama, accusing him of undermining internal democracy and of making serious mistakes in government.

Albanian environmentalists are threatening to call a referendum on a controversial draft law on waste imports that MPs adopted on Thursday. The draft now has to go to the President before passing into law.

It is not the first time that green activists in Albania have mustered supporters for a referendum on this hot issue.