In Tirana, rubber bullets expose the rot of Edi Rama's rule

By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin · October 17, 2026

As students face tear gas and rubber bullets in Tirana, Edi Rama relies on police force to crush protests, proving his government has lost the moral right to govern.

When riot police in Tirana reached for rubber bullets on Saturday, they did not just escalate a skirmish; they signed a confession. For the fifth day in a row, the heart of the capital became a battleground of tear gas, water cannons, and paving stones. The BBC and NBC News report that hundreds have been arrested, and young people breathe saline eyewash through gas masks. This is what happens when a government treats demographic survival as a public order problem.

The students outside the Ministry of Education are not paid operatives of the opposition Democratic Party, despite what Prime Minister Edi Rama claims. They are the children of a country that has bled its workforce for a decade. They are students like 19-year-old George, a medical student and electrician, who told the BBC: "We have mothers too. We have family too. We were peaceful for 135 days. Now we are trying to do like in France… we are trying to make a revolution." When university student Klea told reporters that young people have left school to fight for their rights, she spoke for an entire generation told to wait.

The strongest opposing case for Edi Rama is that he is the indispensable modernizer of a fractured Balkan state, the man who centralized power precisely because consensus in Tirana is impossible, and that yielding to street violence would invite the return of the chaotic 1990s led by figures like Sali Berisha. This argument points out that the Socialist Party holds a comfortable parliamentary majority. It frames Rama as the leader who can guide Albania toward European Union accession by 2030. It warns that violent protests spearheaded by masked youth throwing petrol bombs threaten the institutional stability required by Brussels.

Yet this defense collapses under the weight of its own cynicism. The European Union accession process is not a blank check for autocracy; it requires the rule of law, anti-corruption safeguards, and environmental protections. As Euronews and Al Jazeera report, the current explosion—known as the Flamingo Revolution—was catalyzed not merely by abstract politics, but by real-world dispossession: plans to carve up protected coastal land into luxury eco-resorts backed by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. When the special prosecution service arrests secret service chief Vlora Hyseni for allegedly shielding a businessman linked to organized crime, and when a Prime Minister has concentrated so much authority in his own hands that political analyst Lutfi Dervishi rightly calls him the victim of his own success, stability is just a brand name for impunity.

The ghost of the 2011 Albanian protests shows why centralizing power guarantees an explosive reckoning

We have seen this script before, and we know how the characters are cast. The 2011 Albanian protests demonstrated how anti-government protests take hold across the country when popular fury boils over.

Consider how the state handles dissent. Edi Rama blames the student uprising on what he calls a "sinister agenda of foreign actors". This is the classic reflex of a leader who has conflated his personal tenure with the national interest.

Power in small European nations does not operate in a vacuum. When big capital—whether it is Gulf sovereign wealth funneled through American private equity or domestic networks laundering drug and weapons money—decides to pave over protected coastlines, the bill is always paid by the periphery. The students camping out in Tirana are paying it with bruises from rubber bullets fired under the command of State Police chief Skender Hita.

You cannot build a modern European democracy by appointing an artificial intelligence system named Diella to oversee public tenders while your inner circle faces federal indictments and corruption probes.

The government cannot arrest its way out of a demographic exodus

The Albanian state is discovering that tear gas is a terrible substitute for a social contract. National police chief Skender Hita reported that 167 people were arrested over five days. But blotter numbers cannot erase the desperation of a generation setting fire to suitcases in ministry courtyards to symbolize their refusal to emigrate.

Edi Rama insists he will not step down, hiding behind his comfortable parliamentary majority and his devotion to the 2030 European horizon. A leader who relies on police special forces, water cannons, and rubber bullets to greet students has lost the moral right to govern. When prosecutors must clean up elite corruption, and when citizens face tear gas for defending their coast from foreign speculators, no institutional spin can mask the decay.

The streets of Tirana have laid bare the fundamental lie of modern Albanian governance: that stability can be maintained by hollowing out the republic. The students did not start this fire with a sudden taste for chaos; they were driven to it by thirteen years of being treated as an inconvenient surplus in their own home. Edi Rama can blame the opposition, he can blame foreign actors, and he can hide behind his parliamentary seats, but he cannot outlast a generation that has nothing left to lose.

In Tirana, rubber bullets expose the rot of Edi Rama's rule

The ghost of the 2011 Albanian protests shows why centralizing power guarantees an explosive reckoning

The government cannot arrest its way out of a demographic exodus

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