Edi Rama

Edi Rama (born Edvin Kristaq Rama; 4 July 1964) is an Albanian politician, artist and writer who has been serving as the 33rd and incumbent prime minister of Albania since 2013 and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania since 2005. He was Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports from 1998 to 2000. First elected mayor of Tirana in 2000, he was reelected in 2003 and 2007. The coalition of centre-left parties led by Rama in the 2013 Albanian parliamentary election defeated the incumbent centre-right coalition led by Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party of Albania. Rama was appointed prime minister for a second term following the 2017 Albanian parliamentary election. Rama then won a third term following the 2021 Albanian parliamentary election in which he defeated the Democratic Party candidate Lulzim Basha for the second time in a row. Rama is the only Albanian prime minister in history to have won four terms in a row. His party has won all seven elections since 2013—four parliamentary ones and three local ones. Under his decade of tenure, Albania has seen economic growth but also democratic backsliding, with various sources describing his rule as autocratic. Albania has also continued to suffer from emigration. Rama was one of the initiators of Open Balkan, an economic zone of the Western Balkan countries intended to guarantee the "Four Freedoms".