Albanian Media Embellish Mayor’s US Visit

Tirana Mayor Lulzim Basha

Tirana's Mayor is visiting the United States and the government-friendly media in Albania have already added several twists concerning the nature of the visit, even though the municipality has given few details.

Contacted by Balkan Insight on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the municipality of Tirana, could not say if the visit was "official" or who had invited Basha to Washington.

“We will compile a press statement later on and give details on the visit,” Erald Kapri said.

But pro-government newspapers in Tirana, citing sources inside the municipality, have for days filled their pages with stories about Basha’s visit, claiming he was invited to Washington by the city's mayor, Vincent Gray.

A spokesperson for the mayor, Doxie McCoy, told Balkan Insight that no such invitation had been forwarded.

“A short meeting will take place tomorrow, Tuesday,” McCoy said. “A resident of Albanian descent asked Mayor Gray to grant the Albanian Mayor a courtesy visit and Mr Gray complied, as he often holds these kinds of meetings with visiting dignitaries,” he added.   

Basha is a controversial figure in Albania. As Minister of Transport, in 2008 he was indicted for abuse of power in a highway project, which allegedly cost the state about 230 million euro. The indictment against him was thrown out by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.

His election as Mayor of Tirana followed a controversial race. The battle for Tirana was seen as the key contest in the May 8, local elections , pitting former interior minister Basha, candidate of the centre-right government of Sali Berisha, against the opposition Socialist leader and incumbent Tirana mayor, Edi Rama.

After two months of legal wrangling, Albania’s Electoral College declared Basha the winner with a razor-thin victory, following a recount of miscast ballots, which opposition Socialists challenged as illegal.  

The United States is Albania’s most important ally and local officials and the media have frequently distorted the nature of visits by officials to Washington.

After attending President Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009, for example, the press staff of parliamentary speaker Jozefina Topalli passed around a photo of her posing with a “congressman,” Bill Hanbury, who later turned out to be a tour operator.

Although blaming the mistake on a staff glitch, Topalli had more trouble explaining the fabricated news on Albanian state television, TVSH, which claimed that she had met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit.

A similar case was reported in 2001, when Iir Meta –than Socialist Prime Minister –held a meeting with the former US Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

After coming out from the meeting with Cheney, Meta briefly ran into President George Bush in the corridor. This casual meeting was also blown-up by the media at the time.

Albanian politicians, both from the government and the opposition, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in lobbying in the United States.

A review by Balkan Insight of the filings of these lobbying companies under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, FARA, showed their activities were concentrated on securing meetings with American officials for Albanian politicians and media access during their visits.   

The government of Albania pays currently for the services of two lobbying firms in Washington, the Podesta Group and Patton Boggs. 

Lobbyist have been employed often in the past two decades also by the opposition Socialist Party and by the current government's junior partner party, The Socialist Movement for Integration.