{"id":165050,"date":"2018-05-26T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-05-26T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=165050"},"modified":"2018-05-26T08:00:03","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T12:00:03","slug":"albania-opposition-rallies-to-demand-government-resignation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/05\/26\/albania-opposition-rallies-to-demand-government-resignation\/","title":{"rendered":"Albania opposition rallies to demand government resignation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Prime<\/a>
FILE: Prime minister of Albania since 2013 (Photo By Kryeministria.al, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TIRANA, Albania — Thousands of Albanian opposition supporters held an anti-government protest Saturday calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama, whom they accuse of links to organized crime.<\/p>\n

Supporters led by the main conservative Democratic Party’s leader Lulzim Basha on Saturday marched along the capital Tirana’s Martyrs of the Nation boulevard calling \u201cRama go.\u201d They held anti-government posters and Albanian and European Union flags, and some threw stones and hard objects at Rama’s office building and the Interior Ministry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is only one way out — this government being kicked out by the united people,\u201d said Basha.<\/p>\n

Basha said \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of supporters were taking part at the rally. Police gave no figures.<\/p>\n

Some protesters pulled down a fence at the Interior Ministry and tried to break in the police cordon. The Democrats showed a picture of their newspaper’s editor-in-chief Blendi Kasmi injured in skirmishes with police. The rally ended peacefully after about two hours.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Rama took to Facebook to thank the Democrats \u201cwho do not support the government but still refused to take part\u201d in the rally.<\/p>\n

The Democrats also accuse Interior Minister Fatmir Xhafaj of supporting his brother’s drug-related activities. Earlier this month his brother Agron handed himself over to the Italian authorities to serve a drug-related sentence in 2002.<\/p>\n

The minister denies the allegations, saying he would resign the moment the claims are proven.<\/p>\n

The Democrats suffered a landslide loss in last year’s vote, securing only 43 seats in the 140-seat parliament.<\/p>\n

Albania, a NATO member since 2009, is expecting to launch negotiations to join the EU next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIRANA, Albania — Thousands of Albanian opposition supporters held an anti-government protest Saturday calling for the resignation of Prime Minister …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":165051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[5530,51278],"class_list":["post-165050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","tag-albania","tag-edi-rama","mauthors-llazar-semini","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}