page_title: Sali Berisha
section_title: Prime Minister (2005–13)
hierarchical_section_title: Sali Berisha / Prime Minister (2005–13)
caption_attribution_description: George W. Bush and Sali Berisha.
context_page_description: Sali Ram Berisha, is an Albanian cardiologist and conservative politician who served as the second President of Albania from 1992 to 1997 and Prime Minister from 2005 to 2013. He was also the leader of the Democratic Party of Albania twice, from 1991 to 1992 and then again from 1997 to 2013. To date, Berisha is the longest-serving democratically elected leader and the only Prime Minister to serve two full terms since the end of Communism.
  A former secretary of the committee of the Party of Labor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tirana, he abandoned his career as a cardiologist and university professor to become the leader of the Democratic Party in the 1990s. From 1992, after the fall of communism, he served as the first non-Communist President of Albania until his government collapsed in 1997 in the wake of the collapse of notorious pyramid schemes. From 1997 to 2005, Albania was governed by the Socialist Party for two mandates, while he stayed in opposition.
  In 2005, the Democratic Party won the general elections, and he became the Prime Minister after his coalition formed the new government.
context_section_description: On 3 July 2005, Sali Berisha was able to lead a coalition of five right center parties into the 2005 parliamentary elections, which eventually won a majority of 74 MPs from a total of 140. He was appointed Prime Minister of Albania on 8 September 2005.
  On 10 June 2007, Sali Berisha met with U.S. President George W. Bush in Tirana. Bush became the first U.S. president to visit Albania and repeated his staunch support for the independence of neighbouring Kosovo from Serbia: "At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you've got to say, enough is enough. Kosovo is independent."
  On 15 March 2008, Berisha faced the toughest challenge of his government when an ammunition dump exploded in the village of Gërdec near Tirana, causing the deaths of 26 people and injuring over 100. Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu resigned, and the press reported many irregularities at the blast site, operated by an Albanian company that deactivated the country's aging ammunition and then sold it for scrap.
  In June 2009, Berisha's Democrats declared a narrow win in the parliamentary elections.
  Berisha's alliance came up one seat short of a majority and had to join forces with a splinter socialist party, the Socialist Movement for Integration of Ilir Meta, in order to retain power.  Berisha appointed to Meta to the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs, and later Minister of Economy, Trade and Energy. It is the first time since the start of multi-party democracy in 1991 that a ruling party had been forced into a coalition through not winning enough seats on its own.
  The 2009 elections were flawed and have been called as such by the socialist opposition, who have asked for a recount of the ballots. Berisha refused any recount of the votes, on the grounds that the Albanian Constitution does not foresee such procedure. For that reason he called the opposition to the parliament to change the constitution, but the Socialist Party refused. The political crisis between government and opposition worsened over time, with the Socialists abandoning parliamentary debates for months and staging hunger strikes to ask for internal and international support. The EU attempted a conciliation, which failed. The ongoing political crisis was one of the reasons for the EU's refusal to grant Albania official candidate status in late 2010.
  On 21 January 2011, clashes broke out between police and protesters in an anti-government rally in front of the Government building in Tirana. Four people were shot dead from government special forces. The EU issued a statement to Albanian politicians, warning both sides to refrain from violence, while Berisha defined the protests and the subsequent charges by judges upon policemen as stages of an attempted coup against him – consequently using this to his advantage to further attempt to consolidate his grip on the state institutions. He accused the then President of having been part of the coup after the relations had soured between the two and he embraced his perceived victim status to install his own 'yes man' in the office.
  Under his leadership, Albania made several strides in sustainable development. In the 2012 Environmental Performance Index, the country ranked 4th out of 132 countries, while maintaining an average GDP growth of 5.1% between 2007 and 2011. BY 2012, the country was producing more than 96 percent of the energy through renewable hydropower resources. For his significant achievements and contributions to sustainable development, he was awarded the Fray International Sustainability Award in 2012.
  After his party's defeat in the 2013 parliamentary election, Berisha resigned as party leader, but he remained in parliament.
caption: Sali Berisha and George W. Bush in Tirana, June 2007.
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