Vlora or Rama, who is closer to Gysi?

Armand Maho

Word of an alleged romantic relationship between Vlora Hyseni and Ergys Agasi reached me by chance, several days after the video scandal broke, showing Mirlinda Karçanaj in the office of Rama's coordinator. The person I was speaking to told me that the head of SHISH also appeared in those videos, in highly compromising situations. At the time, there was much talk about those videos and about numerous political figures allegedly appearing in them.

"How could the head of the intelligence service lower herself to that level?" I asked.

"Everyone in Tirana knows this. You're the one who is late to the story."

In fact, my surprise and disbelief were justified—as they should have been. It was not that I cared what Vlora did in her private life; I simply could not understand that the head of the secret service could ever allow herself to sink to such a point.

I never believed this rumor about Vlora Hyseni—until yesterday, when the messages between them became public.

Ergys Agasi had brought the intelligence service so low that he treated its chief the way one treats an annoying caller interrupting them on the phone.

I do not know—and have no way of knowing—the nature of the relationship between Gys Agasi and Vlora Hyseni. Similar rumors suggest that their acquaintance dates back to when she started working as Rama's security adviser. Others place it even earlier, at the time when Hyseni needed Albanian citizenship, and Agasi allegedly helped her obtain it. Some even believe that Agasi proposed her appointment as head of SHISH after one of those dinners at which €33,000 worth of bottles of wine were served—undoubtedly with Vučić's blessing as well.

Who can make sense of it?

But something else appears to be unfolding behind this story. Those intercepted communications would not have been released without Rama's say-so. His rush to dismiss Vlora Hyseni, accompanied by those empty declarations that his position towards justice remains the same as it was on the first day of the justice reform—and all the rest of his sugar-coated bullshit—reveals a man in deep trouble.

Hyseni's immediate dismissal stands light-years apart from the position Rama took towards Balluku. This glaring double standard appears designed to conceal something more serious by reducing the affair to a private matter—a romantic entanglement between two individuals supposedly sneaking around behind the back of an "honest" man like Edi Rama.

But Edi Rama is not the victim in this story. He is its architect. He has opened one case in order to bury another once and for all: his own involvement in corrupt and personal dealings with Ergys Agasi—dealings that were even closer than those involving Vlora Hyseni.

It would be to the credit of the justice system if SPAK refused to sink into this swamp of an operation intended to rescue Rama from the scandal. This story, which has seriously stained the country above all else, must not be allowed to end here.

Justice has repaid whatever debt it may have owed Edi Rama. Now it is time for justice to repay its debt to the Albanian people.