In Albania, Public Sector Political Hires are Undermining Democracy

Drini ImamiTiranaBIRNJune 26, 202607:49The current protests reflect frustration with a clientelist system that rewards party loyalty over merit and uses the public administration to distribute privileges and resources to supporters. Albania has been experiencing large-scale protests for over three weeks. The immediate trigger was a controversial tourism development project in Zvernec associated with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump. But the demonstrations reflect a much deeper frustration with what many citizens perceive as a corrupt and clientelist system that serves a small political and economic elite rather than society as a whole.

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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Balkan Insight.