With a little help from Orlando Rakipi
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Socialists triumph in Tirana
During the recent parliamentary elections, the Socialist Party gained an additional 26,000 votes in Tirana when compared to the 2017 elections, thereby securing 18 seats which are of crucial importance in forming a parliamentary majority. Orlando Rakipi, a 27 year-old with no previous political credentials played an integral role in winning Tirana, gathering almost 16,000 votes. Statistically, Mr. Rakipi is one of the most successful politicians in Albania, trailing only a couple of hundred votes behind the leader of the opposition, Mr. Lulzim Basha.
Orlando Rakipi, a recent graduate of the Aleksandër Xhuvani University in Tirana emerged from the May 25th parliamentary elections as one of the key candidates which helped in securing SP’s victory in Tirana.
Orlando, who is the son of a former member of the Albanian Parliament, namely Aqif Rakipi, gathered 16,000 Votes in Tirana, effectively taking Mr. Ervin Bushati’s seat in the next parliament. Mr. Bushati is an expert in economics and graduate of Depaul University in the U.S, who currently serves as the Chairman of the Socialist Party in Tirana.
Success runs in the family
Orlando’s electoral success may be attributed to his father, who himself managed to break several records during the 2017 parliamentary elections, as he managed to secure 18% of the popular vote in the District of Tirana whilst running as a candidate for the PDIU.
Unfortunately, Aqif Rakipi’s political career would turn out to be rather short-lived. In 2018, Mr. Rakipi was forced to resign from his position as member of parliament, when information regarding his criminal activities in Italy came to light.
Mr. Rakipi had been apprehended and detained by the Italian police in 1998 under the charge of possession of stolen goods. Although as per Albania’s decriminalization law this particular offence is not considered as being of a sufficient gravity to justify barring an individual for running for public office, Mr. Rakipi was expelled from parliament in light of his failure to declare this rather inconvenient incident with the Italian Police.
Given the legally trivial nature of this offence, the fact that Mr. Rakipi chose not to declare it may seem unreasonable. It should be noted however, that the ex-member of parliament took reasonable steps to ensure that this information would not become public. During his encounter with the Police in 1998, Mr. Rakipi supplied the officers with false information, stating that his name was Skender Ejylbegaj. Although Aqif Rakipi’s political career was short lived, his son Orlando’s meteoric rise to political stardom should serve as consolation.
A Remarkable Run
In these parliamentary elections, Orlando Rakipi has outperformed all of the current cabinet ministers, the chairman of the socialist party in Tirana, and even managed to gather more votes than Edi Rama himself did in any one of the cities in which the prime minister ran as a candidate. Orlando’s rise to the upper-echelons of Albanian politics has been nothing short of amazing. It will certainly be interesting to see what the future holds in store for this rising star of the socialist party.
