The Most Expensive Prayer in the World

Sali Berisha’s propaganda machine is so desperate for a photo opportunity with Barack Obama that he is travelling to D.C just to say a prayer. 

Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha is travelling to D.C where he is expected to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, a yearly event organized by a congressional committee, where a group of US representatives, including some world leaders join to say a prayer for world peace.

Yes, if you are already wondering it isn’t much different from a beauty pageant, apart from the models in swimsuits. However, this year the breakfast is expected to be special, because as the word is out, President Barack Obama will be the keynote speaker.    

While the Obama phenomena has spread around the world faster than a tsunami wave, leaders from countries with questionable democratic governance like the Philippines and Albania are rushing to D.C to prop their credentials.

After the visit of former US president George W. Bush in Albania in June 2007, where he received a rock star visit, Berisha’s relationship with the United States has worsened.

The increasing corruption scandals, his attacks on General Prosecutor Ina Rama-widely supported by the US for her investigations of high level officials, and the attacks on critical media have turned this former Washington darling into a target of criticism for undemocratic behavior.    

Harsh US criticism has also received the passing by Berisha of a lustration law on former communist officials in December, which breaches not only the Albanian constitution and every human rights convention that the country has signed, but also shatters the last hopes for moral justice of those who suffered under one of the most brutal Stalinist regime’s in Europe.  

A photo with  Obama could be a god-given gift for Berisha’s propaganda machine before the upcoming general elections in June. So desperate is his administration to claim US support that it is prepared to blatantly lie about it.

After attending Obama’s inauguration on Jan 20, the Albanian parliamentary speaker, Jozefina Topalli, who by the way had no official invitation, passed around a photo with a “congressman” that 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 that she met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her visit.

TVSH, which lately has tuned into such a propaganda mouthpiece that is slandering every one not liked by the government, used a photo made in 2006, to claim that Topalli had a meeting with Clinton.       

In this small but strongly pro American country, where the US is looked as a quantification of its democratic aspiration a simple photo could be used to usher the sinister aims of the propaganda machine.

As a result, I also would have a prayer, which differently from the one that Berisha wants to murmur on the national mall in DC does not need tens of thousands of dollars from Albania taxpayer’s money.

I pray to president Obama to tell Berisha that “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history”

As he has shown no signs or “willingness to unclench his fist” don’t extend him your hand Mr. President and fulfil the“god-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness,” so those of us fighting in a place when nothing but hope and virtue have survived, can say: Yes we can!