By Prof. Dr. Sali Berisha,

Chairman of the Democratic Party of Albania.

Dear friends,

The visit of the Secretary of the U.S. State Department, for any country and moreover for Albania, is a very important event, especially in this troubled period for the world and our region.

The Democratic Party of Albania is the main promoter of the cooperation and of the friendship between Albania and the United States during these last 33 years. It is the DPA that was behind the Albanian membership to NATO a decade and a half ago, as well as the main locomotive of Albania's integration processes in the EU. The DPA remains fully determined to support, same as up to today and without hesitations, the cooperation and the friendship between our two countries, as well as every effort in the framework of NATO and US bilateral actions, for peace and security in the region, Europe and beyond. Dear friends, today's visit of Secretary Blinken is the 6th visit of a U.S. Secretary of State to Albania. But this is the first visit of a State Secretary, after 33 years of pluralism, that unfortunately, at least at protocol level, has meetings only with party-state high officials.

This is due to the massive violation of any vote principle by the government, as today, as never before in the history of pluralism of the country, 95% of all appointed or elected high officials, belong to the party-state of Edi Rama.

Second, Edi Rama, currently the most corrupt Prime Minister in Europe, has gone as far as to bribe the Head of the FBI counterintelligence unit in New York Charles McGonigal, in what represents a super 'Watergate' of this century, in order to put under Rama’s control the Albanian opposition, all while paying him at least 225k USD to manipulate a file against the Albanian opposition. Official documents prove that in addition to McGonigal, Louis Bladel, Mark Rossini, Edi Rama and his mentor George Soros have intensively lobbied for my designation as non-grata on corruption, without presenting any evidences, and 8 years after I have resigned from any state function.

They did this with the sole purpose of silencing the voices that strongly denounced Edi Rama's mega corrupt affairs, his terrible connections with criminals in Albania, in the region and up to the Mexican Sinaloa, but also that denounced Edi Rama's support of the Serbian-Russian projects in the region such as the borders change and the de-facto partition of Kosovo between Serbia and Albania.

They did this because we strongly opposed the Open Balkans project, that was openly supported by Sergei Lavrov and just as openly by Alexis Soros. We also opposed Rama’s open defense of Belgrade at international summits for not respecting NATO and EU sanctions against Russia. But on this occasion, I want to guarantee you dear friends, that I stand by to what I have written in my letter addressed to the State Secretary Blinken on May 2021, that at the moment the US government, its agencies or any other country will present a single piece of evidence or document to prove my corruption, Sali Berisha will finally leave politics.

The truth is that after three years of intensive and multifaceted investigations, the Albanian government, the judiciary controlled by it, and no one else have been able to find any evidence or document to blame Sali Berisha. This is why I am today under arrest on the political orders of Edi Rama, like no other another opposition leader elsewhere, without any charge and based on a process that violates the Albanian constitution and laws, but also International Conventions of Human Rights!

I am today under house arrest based on a political order, as a person under investigation because my son-in-law, Jamarbër Malltezi - as one of the 510.000 Albanian citizens who in the years 2006-2021 received a total of 1.577.400.000m2 of land in exchange and compensation - received in full accordance with the law, 410 m2 of his family's land confiscated by the communist regime 60 years ago (detailed link at the end of this text).

Monism in Albania is also installed because Edi Rama has been denying 43 opposition MPs their basic constitutional rights for a long time. He does not accept the creation of parliamentary investigative commissions for his large corrupt mega-affairs, his PPPs, the Dubai City in Durres, the Butrint Park, the Rama-McGonigal super scandal for which there is a trial in Washington. Rama does not accept the opposition’s elected representatives in the parliamentary committees and with Rama’s strict control over the justice system, and according to his public orders, he keeps the leader of the largest opposition party under house arrest without any charge, transforming Albania, a NATO member country, in Uganda or Tunisia of Europe. With this act, Edi Rama continues the tradition of his biological father, the former Dictator’s deputy, Ramiz Alia, who signed in August 1988 the last political execution in all of Eastern Europe, the rope hanging as a political opponent, of the dissident poet Havzi Nela. For all of this, I want to guarantee the Albanians and all friends of Albania in the USA, and everywhere in the world, that the Albanian opposition is today more determined than ever to restore free elections and political pluralism in the country based precisely on the values of freedom that Secretary James Baker spoke about in front of 200.000 Albanians 33 years ago.