“The best time of our lives is when our country calls upon us” [Ora me e bukur, eshte ora kur te th’rret atdheu] is Sali Berisha’s most famous and inspiring statement. This is also the overarching theme that highlights the former Albanian prime minister’s return as the conservative leader of Albania: his plea to fellow Albanians worldwide to vote in the May 11 elections and then return home to rebuild democracy. Berisha, the historic anti-communist leader, a friend of the US who led Albania into NATO in 2009 and into formal candidacy for the European Union in 2006, is now leading the conservative opposition again.
For Berisha, the national parliamentary elections of May 11th, 2025, are the most consequential elections of our lifetime and may determine whether Albania stays a democracy or becomes another Venezuela. He is tapping on the widespread Albanian diaspora in Europe to vote and secure a decisive win for his party. As of early 2025, Berisha rallied with expatriates in Italy, Germany, and Greece, generating an enthusiasm that resembled the early 1990s. The Albanian expatriates can vote through absentee voting for the first time this election. Berisha has also urged those in the Albanian diaspora to return to their homeland to live and work in Albania if he returns as Prime Minister after those elections.
Just as with President Trump, Berisha has been politically persecuted as part of concerted efforts by his opponents at home and abroad to dismantle the conservative opposition.
But Albania’s election results matter not only to Albanians but to the United States as well:
First, Albania’s democracy is at risk, due to George Soros and his Open Society Forum having experimented with Albania after Soros was ejected from most other Eastern European countries. So-called justice reform initiated by Soros and funded by USAID has enabled Socialist Party leader Edi Rama’s government to conduct a political witch hunt and control all the institutions. This “justice reform” has turned the country into a political witch hunt and a legal and prosecutorial theater.
https://euronews.al/en/arben-ahmetaj-leaves-albania-as-special-prosecution-seeks-to-arrest-him/
https://ftp.aiis-albania.org/?p=153895
In a direct interview with this author, Berisha stated, “Soros and the current government tried extremely hard to create a governing establishment with an opposition in name only, especially during 2021-2024. In the last four years, three leaders from the opposition parties–parliamentary members and local elected leaders–have been imprisoned, while drug-related criminals have been pardoned.”
Second, election integrity is at stake.
After the conservative opposition called the 2021 elections in Albania fraudulent, the Soros-backed socialist government and the US State Department orchestrated a concerted attack on Berisha. In May 2021, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken designated Berisha and his family persona non grata to the USA.
The charge came eight years after Berisha had resigned from the party leadership in 2013. At this time, in 2021, Berisha was a regular parliamentary member. The efforts to oust him from politics backfired. Albanian conservatives saw this as a political attack and called a new convention. Berisha was reelected as the leader of the Democratic Party.
After Berisha’s return as the Party Leader, the same concerted efforts against him continued with legal challenges, or “lawfare,” against the legitimacy of the Democratic Party’s elections. These legal challenges, known as the Battle over the Party’s Seal, were orchestrated to dismantle the conservative opposition. It took three years for the High Court of Albania to rule in favor of Berisha and recognize the legality of his leadership over the party in June 11, 2024 .
Third: The conservative Leader of Albania has been politically persecuted by the former Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, the current socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama, Soros’s Open Society Foundation, and the former US ambassador Yuri Kim. The manufacturing of evidence against Berisha also included bribery of former FBI agent Charles McGonigal. At the same time McGonigal was working at the FBI to prosecute President Trump, McGonigal was paid $225,000 by Rama to fabricate evidence against Sali Berisha. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/17/1232259285/ex-fbi-official-sentenced-albania-payments
Blinken’s sanctions were framed as a response to Berisha’s alleged ‘corruption’ from 2005-2013, when he had been the Prime Minister. Anthony Blinken was the advisor to Vice President Joe Biden during that time period. Yet during the same period, the same people declared Albania the first country in the world to implement the complete digitalization of the procurement processes, which led to the United Nations giving Albania the International Award for Transparency.
Berisha stated that the allegations against him were political: “Since 2021, I have asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to provide and make public any evidence that supports his allegation against me. He has never done so.” Sali Berisha gets Antony Blinken defamation lawsuit accepted in Paris court – Washington Times.
At that time, in June 2021, then Member of Congress Lee Zeldin (R-NY) also demanded that Blinken provide evidence used in the allegations against Berisha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON5m5cpo9CU.
In the interview with this author, Berisha stated that “After four years of failed investigation, the political machine tried to fabricate evidence, putting me under house arrest from December 2023 through November 2024 under complete surveillance and limiting my communications.” From December 2023 to November 2024, Berisha was placed on house arrest on “passive corruption” charges.
On February 16, 2024, two months after Berisha’s house arrest, Anthony Blinken visited Tirana and told Albanians that Rama was a great leader. The next day, on February 17, 2024, the DC Court sentenced Charles McGonigal to two years and four months in prison for receiving bribes.
During the eleven months of Berisha’s house arrest, massive protests took place in his support in Tirana. News of these protests never made it to the American mainstream media. In March 2024, the Council of American Ambassadors reported that sanctions against Berisha were illegal and without evidence https://www.cna.al/#.
These charges were dismissed by the same Soros-led legal organization that facilitated them shortly after President Donald Trump’s reelection.
Fourth: Berisha has long clashed with Soros. He has openly and publicly pointed out how Soros has been exploiting new democracies in Eastern Europe to extend his ideological influence. Berisha’s concern about Soros playing with democracy started in 1993, when Soros’s employees in Albania were identified as Serbian secret service agents. Berisha voiced concern about Soros mobilizing former communists into NGOs. In 2016, Berisha, as a member of the Albanian Parliamentary Assembly, requested that the US Congress stop Soros’s political engagement outside the United States. Also, at that same time, Berisha officially requested that the EU Parliament designate Soros’s buying of politicians as criminal activity.
The upcoming elections are seen by many as a proxy competition between Trump and Soros outside of the US. https://www.yahoo.com/news/soros-v-trump-socialists-targets-152942137.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
Fifth, Berisha is known for his staunch support for the United States: “In my life and career, I have had two epithets: heavily pro-American and uncorrupted. Both are true. I have been and remain pro-American for the following two reasons. First, no other nation nor other government has ever done more for the freedom of Albanians than the US. And second, the unmatched power of the US is the main guarantee of peace and security for all the free nations in the world.”
Albanians are stauncher supporters of the USA than any other country. The trust Albanians have in the US explains why Soros was so successful at exploiting Albania when he allied with Biden Administration figures, and why Yuri Kim appeared in Albanian media extensively, publicly serving the socialist agenda. This merger of US foreign policy with Soros’s agenda legitimized the so-called justice reform that has virtually turned Albania into a one-party state.
As former Congressman Joseph J. DioGuardi said, “In 2001, after the World Trade Center attack, Albanian people cried in the streets for this tragedy in the USA, while in the other surrounding countries, including Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, people were burning the American flags in their streets.”
Albania is an example of religious tolerance, where Christians and Muslims live in harmony with each other. Albania is the birthplace of Mother Teresa (who was banned from visiting Albania during communism), and Albania is one of the few countries in Europe that protected Jews during WWII https://www.aacl.com/post/albanians-and-jews-an-historic-milestone-in-israel. Albania’s national hero, Gjergj Kastrioti, fought to preserve the country for Christianity during the Ottoman invasion in the 15th century.
Albanian national elections on May 11 will determine whether the power of the current socialist (former communist) ruling party will be cemented further, or whether Albania can return to true democracy under Berisha. It is time for the US State Department to remove Blinken’s 2021 sanctions against Berisha, which were politically motivated and made at the behest of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. Revoking these charges will give the Albanian people hope that free and fair elections are possible, by removing the appearance that Soros and the US Government favor the socialist party. These manufactured charges should not be allowed to linger and affect the election. Albania’s Elections Could Install Pro-American Beachhead In Europe
Albania does not have to become like Venezuela.
*Nina Gjoçi, PhD (Bowling Green State University), is an expert in public memory, international communication, and justice.