VIDEO. Fire, smoke bombs and a pyramid of chairs… What is happening in the Albanian parliament?

The Tirana half-cycle in Albania this Monday, November 20, looked more like a football stand than a parliamentary meeting. During a meeting to vote on the 2024 budget, smoke bombs were detonated in the room, filling the room with thick pink, yellow and green smoke, even forcing the Prime Minister to evacuate. A small fire was lit in front of a pile of folded chairs and was quickly extinguished. At the initiative of these actions: deputies of the Albanian Democratic Party who wanted to stop the vote. They accuse the Socialist prime minister of wanting to silence the opposition.

For almost a month now, tensions have been rising between the elected representatives of this conservative party and the socialists. Already on November 9, deputies lit smoke bombs in the parliament building. Some of them, who were prohibited from entering, climbed through a window outside the building.

These unrest began after conservative and former Prime Minister Sali Berisha was accused of corruption. Last month, prosecutors charged him and his brother-in-law in a land deal involving the sports club’s land. They accuse him of using his influence as prime minister from 2005 to 2009 to pressure “the conclusion of privatization procedures for the benefit of other people, including his daughter’s husband.” Her son-in-law has been arrested, but Berisha enjoys parliamentary immunity. He was ordered not to leave the country.