A victory for Berisha would bring an end to 12 years of rule by Rama’s Socialists, which international observers have described as a period marked by increased state capture by a single party. But it would also usher in a political force openly aligned with Trump’s agenda in a region long seen as being strategically vulnerable to Russian and Chinese influence.
“In the last two years, Chris LaCivita has advised two major political figures, in two different countries … those two cases are Donald Trump and Sali Berisha,” Democratic Party spokesperson Alfred Lela told POLITICO.
According to Lela, the two share “remarkably similar profiles … [they were] persecuted by establishments — domestic and international — targeted by their countries’ justice systems, and painted as dangerous underdogs who must be eliminated from politics at any cost.”
At an event earlier this year, LaCivita said “with a thriving democracy and true friendship with America, we can make Albania great again,” flashing a thumbs-up at the audience. POLITICO put a series of questions to LaCivita about his work in Albania for Berisha but did not receive a response.
Berisha, now 80 years old, is widely viewed as the father of Albanian democracy for his role in the protest movement that unseated Europe’s last hard-line communist regime in 1992 and for becoming the country’s first democratically elected president.
But he was targeted by the Joe Biden administration in 2021 over alleged corruption, kicking off three years of chaos in Albania’s Democratic Party during which Berisha was expelled from the parliamentary group and eventually placed under house arrest ahead of a graft probe — before a court finally handed control of the party back to him in 2024.
