Berisha is trying to win back the opposition by turning against Trump

Berisha’s opposition first distanced itself from the protest so it would not be seen as opposing the Trump family’s project. Today, it made a radical official move in the opposite direction. It submitted a request to parliament to repeal the law that allows Jared Kushner’s project to go ahead.

In other words, it has moved beyond statements. It has taken formal action to remove the legal basis for the investment in that area.

This 180-degree turn from where it stood a week ago looks ridiculous and hard to believe. But for Berisha, it is a useful tactical move. His shift from openly supporting the investment to formally demanding the removal of its legal basis reflects one fear: that the protest may take from him his most valuable asset, the Democratic Party as the opposition.

So why does today’s move by the DP matter?

When the protest began over the flamingos and the curly pelican in Narta, where Kushner’s project is expected to be built, Berisha saw it as a chance to show loyalty to Trump as part of his political alignment with him.

But more than a week later, the protest has become clearer.

It brings together citizens angry with the government and with Albania’s long post-communist transition. It brings together young people who feel shut out of the system. It includes individuals who see it as a chance for visibility and activism. It includes NGOs that see an opportunity to attract funding by visiting storks or defending their own causes. It includes small parties that feel big among the protesters, and former big parties such as the DP, which want to be inside the protest so they do not look as small as they have become.

All of them are legitimate as protesters. But none of this has much to do with the cause of Zvërnec or with the Trump family’s investment.

The Trump family’s investment has become useful, even vital, to the protest because it has internationalised it. The reason the protest now has strong international support is that it has turned Albania into a battlefield against Donald Trump and his family — an ideal chance for Trump’s opponents to strike at one of the world’s most powerful political figures through an Albanian cause, on Albanian soil.

Everyone is excited and ready to support the protest in their own capitals by saying they stand with Albanians against Trump, who “wants to take their island and their pelicans.”

At the front of this is the European Commission, which does not want Kushner’s project in Zvërnec, even if it uses careful language against it. Put more plainly, the European Commission does not want Albania to host such a major American economic foothold before it joins the European Union.

No one in Brussels wants that, but they cannot say it openly. So they speak instead about standards for protecting the curly pelican. An Albania with major tourism investments from Middle Eastern groups close to the Trump family would be a major financial and geopolitical guarantee for the country. But for Brussels, it would also be something hard to swallow.

So we should accept that Brussels is against it too.

This has to do with Europe’s problems with Donald Trump, the Middle East’s problems with him, Asia’s problems with him and everyone else’s problems with him. At this point, Albania is useful cannon fodder. They have simply found an Albanian pretext to vent their anger at Trump, while pretending to care about the real problems Albanians have with the post-communist transition, with government and with a new generation that feels unrepresented.

Berisha has understood that the protest is burying him because of its international support. The only way for him to survive is to help that support collapse.

And that support collapses the moment Kushner’s €4 billion project collapses.

If the protest drives away Kushner and the largest tourism project in the region, international support for the protest will disappear within 24 hours. No one will listen anymore to Albanians’ problems on CNN or the BBC. The funding for schoolchildren drawing pelicans will dry up. The NGO network behind the protest will pack up and leave. And the real protesters will suddenly discover that their problems do not matter very much.

That is why Berisha’s move is clever. He is trying to exclude the Trump family’s investment by law in parliament, so that international support for the protest disappears. Then he can recover the ground lost to a protest that, before bringing down the government, has already brought down the opposition.

It is the only way for him to win back the opposition by turning against Trump.

Originally published in Albanian as: Berisha ka vendosur të rifitojë opozitën duke humbur Trumpin