Tirana, Albania. Prime Minister Edi Rama said Albania will continue with a luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner despite ongoing protests over its environmental impact. He told Reuters the development would move forward and said parts of the resort could open to the public before the end of the decade.
Protests over protected wetland
Thousands of people have protested in the capital Tirana and on the southern coast where the resort is planned, calling for the project to be abandoned because of its impact on a protected wetland. The area is home to flamingoes, seals and sea turtle nesting sites.
The flamingo has become the symbol of the protest movement, with demonstrators carrying inflatable pink birds and signs reading “Flamingo Revolution”.
Rama defends the project
Rama told Reuters that the developers would “stun” onlookers with their plans in the coming months. He said the project would be “a beautiful project” and that Albania would be proud to contribute to Europe.
Speaking in his office near the site of nightly demonstrations against the project, Rama said he had been elected to carry out such developments and not to be guided by people with different views on how the country should develop.
Political and personal profile
Rama, 61, is a former basketball player and artist who took office in 2013 and aims to bring Albania into the European Union. He has highlighted the modernisation of a country that remained under a restrictive communist dictatorship until the 1990s.
Reuters described his style as informal, wearing a baggy black suit with a black T-shirt and white sneakers. His office was described as resembling an urban co-working space, with wallpaper overlaid with his paintings, plates of crayons and coloured markers, and a desk covered with doodles.
Development plans and investors
The resort project is backed by Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, who have said they fell in love with Albania during a boat visit a few years ago. Rama said he met them on that trip and described them as “very nice, humble…humanly good people.”
Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners is involved in the €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) project near the Vjosa-Narta protected area, as well as another project on nearby Sazan Island.
