After the first two European elections this year in Kosovo and Germany, two more important ones are coming up. They are bellwethers for major changes on the continent amid U.S. attempts to resolve the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The Albanian national parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 11, 2025, and, after Romania’s November 2024 elections were annulled, they were rescheduled for May 2025. For both countries, concerns for election integrity remain high. What’s happening in Albania could help shed a spotlight on European and Eastern European nations.
Albania’s parliamentary elections are of international significance. Albanians are voting against corruption, total government control, and George Soros’ influence in the country. Soros’ Open Society Foundation has experimented with “justice reform” that has turned the country into a legal and prosecutorial playground. U.S. tax dollars via the U.S. Agency for International Development also funded Soros’ policies in Albania, which have caused a democratic crisis.
The current Albanian government has been in power for 12 years and seeks a fourth term under Prime Minister Edi Rama, leader of the Socialist Party of Albania. The war over “justice reform” has turned the country into a living theatre for political games and persecution. Young people are leaving Albania as these politically motivated attacks have diminished hope for true democracy and opportunity.
After the opposition deemed Albania’s 2021 elections fraudulent, Joe Biden’s State Department helped Albania’s socialist government by attacking the conservative opposition. Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken sanctioned Sali Berisha, the historic leader of the Democratic Party, and banned him and his family from entering the United States. The United Kingdom followed suit. Albanian conservatives have asked the new Trump administration to lift that designation.
“Corruption” accusations against Berisha, which are known in Albania as politically motivated, remind Albanians of their not-so-distant communist past when political persecution, censorship, and fabrication of evidence were the norm. In a December 2021 convention, Albania’s Democratic Party elected Berisha to lead them again. He is now the conservative opposition leader.
“The allegations against me were completely political,” Berisha said in a recent interview with this author. “Since 2021, I have asked Mr. Blinken to provide and make public any evidence that supports his allegation against me. He has never done so. After four years of failed investigation, the political machine tried to fabricate evidence, and in 2024, the prosecutorial state invented a ‘passive corruption’ charge against me.”
Berisha sued Blinken for defamation in 2021. Berisha was placed under house arrest from December 2023 through November 2024 under complete surveillance and limited communication. The Council of American Ambassadors declared the sanctions against him were illegal and without evidence. In December 2024, the High Court of Albania removed charges against Berisha.
For 11 months of Berisha’s house arrest, Albanians rallied under his apartment protesting. News of these protests never made it through American corporate media. However, despite concerted efforts to sway public opinion against him, the people stood by Berisha again.
For Berisha, this support is everything. He says, “My designation in the U.S. as persona non grata was designed to oust me from politics. But in the end, people choose differently.”
Berisha and his supporters say the evidence against him was manufactured. In 2024 his case was discarded by the Albanian High Court. It turned out that Rama himself, when a mayor of Tirana, had signed the documents used to frame Berisha for “passive corruption.”
Berisha is especially concerned with the return of censorship across Europe: “Censorship is how every dictatorship starts. Censorship started to be praised again, just like in communism, as a result of Soros’s prosecutorial initiatives and propaganda. This is dangerous. Big companies, which brought magnificent and useful communication technology into society, started applying censorship.”
I asked Berisha about the upcoming elections.
“Free and fair elections are at stake,” he said. “EU reports show that socialist governments have not respected international norms for free and fair elections. In this election, far more than in 2021, the current government is using the ‘electoral’ state, state budget, state employees — the whole administration — and drug cartels to secure a fourth mandate.”
Conservative Albanians see the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House as an opportunity for Albania and the region. Berisha called Trump’s return a miracle for humanity and a historical event.
“God saved his life for a reason, and his nation chose him as president in a free and fair election,” Berisha said. “The return of Trump marks the end of the use of U.S. taxpayers’ contribution, and U.S. power, against the conservative opposition parties around the world. It marks the end of Soros’s influence, which has tormented the world, especially Eastern Europe, and has now developed roots with the former communist party currently governing Albania. Trump’s return marks the end of Soros’s control of non-governmental organizations in the region through super-censorship, super-corruption, and super-speculation to turn the justice system into a tool of the executive branch of government.”
Berisha is confident that Trump will protect freedom of speech and thought, encourage celebrations of national historical traditions and cultures, and help preserve family and human dignity.
With Trump as president, Berisha predicts that democracy in the Southeast Europe region will prevail against socialist parties, which are really communist parties rebranded. Berisha explained how in 2016, as a concerned member of the Albanian Parliamentary Assembly, he asked the U.S. Congress to stop Soros’ political engagement outside the United States. He also officially requested that the European Union Parliament designate Soros’ massive funding of leftist politicians as a criminal activity.
“Soros became a key player in the Biden administration’s foreign policy, especially in the Balkans,” Berisha said. “Surprisingly, Soros’ foreign policy for the Balkans matched the policy of Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Besides the justice reform project, Soros’ most famous project was the one on border change and territorial exchange in the region, which would divide Kosovo between Albania and Serbia. Milosevic proposed the same project as well, via third persons, a few times during 1992-93, but it was refused by both Albania and the international community.”
Given the frustration of Albanians with the current government, the chances for the opposition to win are very high. Yet widespread concerns about election integrity also remain high. Albanian expatriates can vote for the first time via an absentee voting system.
The issues that concern Albanian voters are widespread corruption, censorship, political persecution, religion, and foreign policy. Albanians are also voting on the Soros-backed persecution of Berisha. Let’s hope the Albanian diaspora vote will prevent Albania’s elections from becoming like those in Venezuela.
Dr. Nina Gjoçi is an Albanian native and an expert in public memory, international communication, and justice. She is a faculty in the Communication, Culture, and Media Studies Department at Howard University in Washington D.C.
