Prime Minister Edi Rama has responded after a video recorded in Basel, Switzerland, circulated on social media, with claims that the trip had been funded by the state. In a post on X, Rama denied these allegations, emphasizing that throughout his public service career he has never undertaken a private trip using state funds.
Rama explained that he was in Switzerland on a private invitation from Art Basel, the world-renowned annual art fair featuring some of the most prestigious galleries, where his own artworks were also exhibited. According to him, the trip and the one-and-a-half-day stay were paid for entirely by him and his wife, without any cost to the state budget.
Full Statement by Prime Minister Edi Rama
“It appears that a video has been circulating in which someone supposedly caught me red-handed drinking water in Basel, Switzerland, at the expense of the state…
In nearly three decades of public service, I have never traveled privately using state funds, and the same applies to my family.
In 13 years as Prime Minister, neither my family nor I have ever gone on vacation abroad at the state’s expense.
I was in Switzerland as a private guest of Art Basel, the annual fair of the world’s most prestigious art galleries, where some of my works have also been exhibited. My wife and I traveled there and stayed for a day and a half, and, as always in such cases, we covered all expenses ourselves.
But this is a good opportunity, at the right moment, to put a clear dot on the ‘i’.
About twenty years ago, when I had not yet developed a thick skin against slander and baseless accusations, I publicly declared that ‘there isn’t a son of a mother who can find a single penny in my pocket that was not earned through honest work.’
Today, two decades later, I am naturally no longer that 40-year-old man who was still unaccustomed to the viciousness and mudslinging of political life, losing sleep over the painful wounds caused by slander and criminal accusations.
But I say with pride that the statement I made back then, out of pain and a sense of shame before the people who trusted me with the leadership of Tirana, remains 100% intact in its substance today before all those who have entrusted me with the leadership of Albania.
And never forget this:
Whoever slanders or accuses you without evidence has either done the very thing they accuse you of, or would do it if they were in your position. That is why jealousy, hatred, or both together make them believe every piece of nonsense they utter.
When I see how the world we live in has increasingly become, thanks to social media, a field where the endless thorns of lies multiply at the speed of a click, while the flowers of truth are often suffocated by those thorns, my thoughts always turn to the Holy Books, where the slanderer is portrayed as even worse than a murderer.”
