Tirana Times, December 22, 2025 – Tirana witnessed a major opposition-led protest on Saturday, as Albania’s main opposition force, the Democratic Party, together with allied groups, demanded the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama and his government. The demonstration was framed not as a routine political rally, but as a response to what opposition leaders described as a profound and unprecedented collapse of the rule of law. The protest was triggered by two converging and highly explosive developments: the exposure of a structured criminal group operating inside a national security institution and parliament’s refusal to authorize the arrest of Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku, despite a formal request by prosecutors.
At the core of the protest stood the revelations surrounding the National Agency for Information Society (AKSHI), an institution responsible for state digital systems and sensitive national data infrastructure. Investigators allege that a criminal network operated from within the agency, involving senior officials, businessmen, and figures linked to organized crime. According to prosecutors, the group coordinated manipulation of public tenders, coercion of competitors, fictitious invoicing, money laundering, and the systematic elimination of competition. The case has deeply shocked public opinion not only because of its financial scale, but because it directly implicates a pillar of Albania’s national security architecture.
Opposition speakers argued that the AKSHI affair erases any remaining distinction between state authority and criminal power. They pointed to evidence gathered by the Special Anti-Corruption Structure, including thousands of pages of documentation and wiretaps, which allegedly show a businessman wielding extraordinary informal power and acting as a coordinator between government officials, senior police officers, and criminal groups. According to the opposition, these findings confirm that parts of the Albanian state no longer function as public institutions, but as components of a criminal enterprise, relying on intimidation, corruption, and pressure on witnesses in a manner reminiscent of mafia structures.
The protest gained further momentum following parliament’s decision, dominated by the ruling Socialist Party, to block SPAK’s request to arrest Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku. Prosecutors have expanded their investigation to include multiple large-scale infrastructure tenders, with alleged damages reaching at least one billion euros. Opposition leaders argued that parliamentary immunity has been transformed from a constitutional safeguard into a political shield designed to protect senior officials from criminal accountability. They stressed that in any functioning European democracy, a deputy prime minister facing such grave allegations would at minimum step aside, if not face immediate judicial measures.
In their speeches, opposition figures directly linked the Balluku case to Albania’s broader justice reform, warning that the refusal to authorize her arrest represents a critical red line. They accused the executive of exerting sustained pressure on independent institutions, including the Constitutional Court, whose controversial decision to reinstate Balluku in office while under investigation has been widely criticized by legal experts. According to the opposition narrative, these actions collectively signal an attempt to subordinate the judiciary to political loyalty, undermining the foundations of the reform process promoted both domestically and internationally.
Addressing the crowd, Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha described the moment as a historic turning point. He argued that Albania is no longer confronting isolated corruption scandals, but a fully consolidated system in which government, crime, and captured institutions operate as a single structure. Berisha accused the ruling majority of transforming parliament into a protective shield for criminal power, warning that the refusal to lift Balluku’s immunity amounts to an open declaration that senior officials are above the law.
Berisha placed particular emphasis on the AKSHI case, calling it proof that even the core of Albania’s national security and digital infrastructure has been penetrated by organized crime. According to him, the exposure of senior officials, police figures, and politically connected businessmen within a single criminal network demonstrates that the state no longer merely tolerates corruption, but actively coordinates it. In his words, Albania is being run like a criminal enterprise, where public institutions are reduced to tools for extortion, intimidation, and illegal enrichment.
A central theme of Berisha’s speech was the future of justice reform and the role of SPAK. While reiterating support for prosecutors investigating high-level corruption, he warned that their work risks being neutralized by political obstruction. He argued that parliament’s decision to block Balluku’s arrest, combined with controversial judicial rulings, sends a devastating message to prosecutors and judges: that justice reform is tolerated only as long as it does not threaten the core of executive power.
Berisha also accused the government of maintaining control through fear and silence. He alleged that witnesses are pressured, whistleblowers intimidated, and critical journalists marginalized, while large segments of the media landscape have become financially dependent on state advertising and business interests linked to criminal networks. This, he claimed, has distorted public debate and prevented citizens from fully understanding the scale of the scandals now unfolding. In such an environment, peaceful protest, he said, remains one of the few remaining tools available to citizens seeking accountability.
Beyond demands for immediate resignations, the opposition framed the protest as the beginning of sustained civic pressure rather than a one-off event. The stated objective is to force early elections and restore what opposition leaders describe as a minimum democratic equilibrium, in which prosecutors can act without political obstruction and parliament cannot override judicial accountability. The message repeated throughout the rally was stark: Albania is not facing isolated corruption cases, but a systemic confrontation between a captured state and the remaining pockets of judicial independence.
Taken together, the developments surrounding the Balluku investigation and the AKSHI scandal underscore the depth of Albania’s institutional crisis. For the opposition and a growing segment of society, the crisis has moved beyond individual cases and is now widely perceived as a defining moment for the country’s democratic trajectory, its credibility as a rule-of-law state, and its European future. The protest signaled that the confrontation between a government accused of blocking justice and an opposition seeking to mobilize public resistance is likely to intensify in the months ahead.
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