Tirana, Albania's capital, turns VERY colorful - thank mayor

Rama, a former sculptor, basketball player and culture minister, claims to have won a landslide 58% victory in the capital [..] He is seen as the man who has done the most to cheer Albania up in the past few years, despite the fact that it remains Europe's poorest country.

Since he first became mayor, in October 2000, Rama, has knocked down hundreds of illegal and dilapidated buildings that made Tirana look more like a building site than a capital city. In their place he has created parks and green spaces.

The human-sized potholes that make Tirana's pavements a permanent hazard are being gradually plugged and the streets are no longer strewn with rubbish.

An army of painters has splashed bright colours over once drab concrete housing blocks built during Albania's communist years. Even the prime minister woke up one pre-election morning to find his block, in the centre of town, had undergone the rainbow treatment.

[..] Rama - noted for his wacky taste in shirts and for surrounding himself with good-looking suit-wearing female municipal staff - describes himself as "a pop star among mayors and a mayor among pop stars".

He led this October's election campaign with a rap song called "Tirona", the slang name for the capital city, recorded together with one of Albania's leading hip-hop bands, West Side Family.

"This is the city where mosques and churches are built side by side/

This is the place where the snobs with Rolex watches go to the gypsy market/

This is the place of disillusions where dreams become reality/

Here is where you meet a mayor shouting down a megaphone/

Where anything can happen/

Where not just the women but also the facades of buildings can wear makeup."

Around 80% of Albanians approve of the facelift Rama has given their capital city, according to polls. But the provocative mayor - whose father was one of Albania's leading sculptors, producing statues of the communist dictator Enver Hoxha - has not escaped criticism.

He is charged with paying too much attention to cosmetic changes in a country where the vast majority still do not have drinking water, effective sewage systems or regular electricity supplies.

Some joke they are in the hands of a megalomaniac mayor, who may soon change the city's name to Ti-Rama.

New SP leader Rama seeks to renew, democratise party

By Erlis Selimaj for Southeast European Times in Tirana -- 13/10/05

The newly-elected leader of the opposition Socialist Party (SP), Edi Rama, has embarked on a programme to restructure the party in the wake of its loss in the July parliamentary elections. At a meeting Wednesday (12 October), Rama urged local party branches to play a larger role in a number of areas, including the selection of a new leadership.

The proposal came a day after the entire SP chairmanship resigned, enabling Rama to inaugurate a sweeping overhaul of the party, dogged by frequent infighting and charges that it has fallen out of touch with voters.

Rama, the mayor of Tirana, won the top party post on Sunday during an extraordinary congress called after the resignation of former Prime Minister and SP head Fatos Nano, who took responsibility for the SP's defeat at the polls after eight years in power.

In voting at the conference, Rama easily beat a rival candidate, former Albanian President Rexhep Meidani to clinch the leadership position. Out of 449 votes, 297 were in favour of Rama and 151 for Meidani.

The new leader told delegates that he would do his best to keep the party united, respecting "opposite opinions".

"Taking this post, I will give the possibility to see closely that I respect all the collaborators; I am very careful towards the others who do not think as I do," Rama said. Among other reforms, Rama has proposed introducing the "one-member, one-vote" concept as the basis for electing the leadership.

According to analysts, Rama faces multiple challenges. He must rebuild the party as a potent opposition force, keeping it in the forefront of left-wing parties, while at the same time building alliances and co-operation with other political forces.

Born in 1964, Rama is an artist as well as a politician. As mayor of Tirana, he gained international notoriety for his ambitious programme to beautify the capital's public spaces. He was elected World Mayor 2004 in an Internet poll.