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Electoral rally presented as a "working meeting", Rama opens the campaign with municipality workers

2025-02-20 20:14:00, Politikë CNA

Electoral rally presented as a "working meeting", Rama opens the

A speech that lasted about 45 minutes in Skanderbeg Square by Prime Minister Edi Rama in front of Tirana Municipality workers seemed to mark the start of the electoral campaign for the May 11 elections, a speech in which Rama referred to opponents and critics as "swamp motherfuckers", "sheep", "squat-pots" or "anti-urban".

Prime Minister Edi Rama did not spare insults and curses for anyone who disagrees with him, including political opponents, critics or journalists, emptying a bag of insulting epithets while delivering a speech before several thousand Tirana Municipality employees summoned to Skanderbeg Square, an event that was clearly an electoral rally but which he himself described as a “working meeting” to avoid the prohibitions imposed by the Electoral Code on the abuse of state resources and the coercion of public sector workers to participate in the ruling party’s rallies.

However, although he repeated the statement not based on facts that "Erion Veliaj has been arrested without trial", Rama seems to have softened his stance towards the Special Structure Against Organized Crime and Corruption while warning the municipality workers not to protest in front of SPAK again, as happened on the day when, in a court session, the security measure of arrest with imprisonment was confirmed by the court at the request of the prosecution.

"I called you to this working meeting because during these days I have seen people who are gloomy, disappointed, and desperate," Rama told the workers after they were shown a promotional video of his and Veliaj's work as mayor of Tirana.

Rama further suggested that the judiciary can make mistakes, while suggesting that politicians' mistakes do not destroy people's lives, unlike the mistakes of justice. He seemed to close the chapter with Lali Erin by wishing him "a fair trial" while continuing to curse and insult anyone who does not think like him or who has comments about the state of the country, from those he called "social media judges" to journalists or political opponents.

"It's not up to me to say whether Lali Eri is innocent or guilty," Rama said.

In fact, even before Rama's speech, in a kind of reaction from the subconscious, the deputy mayor Anuela Ristani referred to the arrested mayor more than once with verbs in the simple past tense.

Midway through the speech, Rama tried to make the municipality workers laugh with a joke involving a barber, where the joke was that a foul smell that was supposed to come from the sewers was actually coming from the armpits of “those who curse.” Rama paused for a few seconds in the hope that the workers would laugh, but the latter seemed to not understand the joke or to be in the mood to laugh.

Towards the end of the speech, as the evening darkness was falling on Skanderbeg Square but Rama still had a lot to say in figures about tax revenues, the multiple increase in planted trees or the amount of taxes paid by those who receive building permits, the crowds of municipality workers called for this working meeting were seen emerging from the encirclement, clearly not very interested in listening to the speech to the end.

Rama referred to critics or opponents as “anti-urban,” “anti-European,” or “armpit-boilers.” For those who have had objections to the Skanderbeg Square project and the dominance of concrete and tiles instead of grass, Rama declared that they were “sheep who made a be-be-ba” while to those who criticize him for creating an oligarchy in the country, with a limited number of businessmen who control the economy with monopolies and concessions and have created a media regime to stifle the truth, Rama referred to them as “frogs, toads, and toads.”

Rama declared that he has no intention of retiring from politics because, he said: "I have a fight to finish."

In the end, he referred to everyone, political opponents, critics among the public, or journalists, as "mothers," while arguing that this "beautiful Albanian" word is appropriate for this case.

As is usual at his electoral meetings, journalists were not allowed to film independently. When this journalist took a picture of the physical control devices for metal objects that the municipality workers had to pass to enter the rally enclosure, a girl in civilian clothes motioned to a guard worker to stop the photography. The guard worker immediately approached and said: “cell phones are not allowed” without explaining what law this was based on./ reporter.al