Prime Minister Edi Rama continues to give advice to Europe on how to proceed with its policies. This time, from Saudi Arabia, where he is participating in a global forum on innovation, Rama stepped into his favorite role, the leader who lectures the West.
According to the Prime Minister, today in the West, what prevails is not the sense of imagination as inspiration for beauty and improvement, but the boring inertia of taking for granted what has been inherited from the past.
"What we are experiencing today in the West is inertia. What we are facing in the Gulf and other parts of the world is imagination. Imagination is fueled by innovation, by the need to climb higher, to make breakthroughs. Imagination is connected to beauty," said Rama.
To show that he is a leader influenced by imagination, the prime minister brought as an example the time when he was mayor and painted the facades of buildings.
"People accused me when I was mayor and I painted the city buildings, they told me this is a facade. What a nightmare it would be if people didn't care how they looked," he said.
Perhaps for foreign panelists, Rama's words may sound like he is making a "revolution" in the country he leads, and not a prime minister of a country with the poorest people in Europe. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that a prime minister like Rama, who leads a country where even the bare minimum is not produced, cannot lecture others on innovation. Painting palaces when he was mayor and building a few towers with suspected criminal financing does not make you a leader with imagination, and even less lecture those who every year help Albania with funds to stay away from poverty.
