Talk:Edi Rama

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[edit] Early talk

It must be the person featured on this site:

http://www2.ronchiato.it/AlbaniaToday/Eng/rama.htm

Them we know his birth time and place. Before 1998 he worked in Paris. --Andres

I am not sure if it is the same person. In fact, I am almost positive that it is not. Dori 15:57, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Meanwhile I did some research. Look at

http://www.palais-jalta.de/geschichte.htm

There you can see the familiar face. His exposition at Palais Jalta is mentioned on the page I cited above. His age fits as well.

Rama was active during the anti-Communist revolution, the Academy of Arts being a political centre. Rama got disappointed in the Democrat Party because of its corruptedness. He criticized Berisha's regime a lot abroad. In 1997 the security agents beat Rama almost dead. After long recovery he emigrated to Paris. When he went to his father funeral in 1998, Fatos Nano called him into his government. --Andres

I am surprised, but I guess it is the same person. Do you want to add the additional info? Dori 00:55, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

OK, I am going to do this.

One more thing. The Academy of Arts of Tirana (formerly Higher Institute of Arts of Tirana) is not part of the University of Tirana (you do not mention it too) and I think never has been. Andres

Yes, that's probably right. Dori 13:31, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I have added three news articles about him, but I don't know if that is too much, especially considering that the article should be in NPOV and those articles have more praises than criticisms for Edi Rama. Dori 16:07, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

I think that's OK. But perhaps we should look whether the articles add something new, and add that to text, and then the articles would be redundant.
For instance, the first article told me nothing new except that his father used to be an official sculptor. Besides, there are other details that add colourite but are not easy to be included to the main text, as surrounding himself with young, beautiful, but clever women etc. And that was familiar from earlier articles.
As to the NPOV, I am more concerned about that the reports of his beating and his assassination attempt are his own interpretation, and his attitude towards Berisha was carried over to this article. Even if we share this attitude that probably isn't NPOV. However, perhaps it's better to let this alone until someone comes and disputes that.
That he was beaten by Berisha's secret police is not confirmed, it is his own opinion, though it sounds plausible, and this is why I included this to the article. But as to the assassination attempt, I found the story too obscure, and this is why I didn't include it to my first edit. Andres 04:42, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think the shooting at his home did happen, but it is not known who or why they did it. Dori
Yes. It is not sure it was an assassination attempt. Andres 23:44, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
If there are no articles criticizing Rama, this is no reason for leaving these articles out. I read them, and they are not redundant though different articles tend to say the same. However I think the best would be to include to the Wikipedia article as much information as possible. Andres 04:57, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)
None of the articles mention corruption though. In Tirana there are only a few construction companies (sort of an oligopoly) and nothing happens without the government officials' approval. In exchange they get kickbacks. I have heard of constructors having to give up an entire floor of their building to officials (as personal property). Edi Rama as the mayor would surely be involved, yet none of the articles mention this. I couldn't find any info to back up these allegations though. I agree that the articles mostly repeated information, but they each had one or two things that the other ones did not have. Dori 14:01, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)
You mean you only have oral information about corruption? What about his political opponents, and Albanian media? Are there any specific cases? Indeed it is difficult to write more that there are corruption allegations. This is what I read somewhere in the Internet but don't remember where. OK, I'll try to do some research and make the article more specific. Andres 23:44, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] POV sentance?

I removed the following sentance, "He has tried many radical ideas to improve the city and is a person who is not afraid to speak his mind which has led to some heated debates with other city officials and citizens." from first paragraph of the article. It seemed sort of POV; assuming he is known for this, maybe a more NPOV version would be "He has tried many radical ideas to improve the city and is well known for his frankness, which has led to some heated debates with other city officials and citizens." Or is another word better? Feel free to reinsert the sentance if you don't think it's POV. JesseW 01:16, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Assasination attempt

I have to say, that i was in Albania at the time when this happened, and due to the V.I.P. status of Mr. Rama this made news during that night and the following days. However i remember quite well what was said (not word by word) that night on TV's and on newspapers tomorrow. Mr. Rama that night in an interview said "The candy's of the doctor (a reference to prof. doc. Sali Berisha) can't harm me" with the candy's he meant bullets/guns. It was revealed that same night that there was any shooting with real guns, but only 2 unknown persons who had apparently used some toys to throw in the windows of mr. Rama's house some plastic balls, and officially the police declared this as a joke, not an assasination attempt. But this didn't stop the left media to accuse the opposition for an attempt to assasinate mr. Rama. Orges 20:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violation

The text below, which I've removed from the article per WP:C, had been copied direct from http://www.worldmayor.com/worldmayor_2004/rama_winner04.html. Even if the editor can confirm they were the original author of the article, or have permission to copy it, it still needs severe copyediting to meet WP standards. Smalljim 13:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

When he had finally regained his health, Edi Rama resumed his career as a painter and sculptor in Paris, but returned to Albania in 1998 when his father died, and after a new government under Fatos Nano had assumed power. The country then was the product of half a century of Stalinist dictatorship topped off with ten years of free market indiscipline, and layered with organized crime. The capital itself was mired in the waste of under-served overpopulation, with corruption in the civil service having facilitated the emergence of a chaos of illegal buildings and decaying streets.

On the evening of the day in the morning of which Mr. Rama attended the service for his father, the phone rang, and it was Prime Minister Nano, who addressed him as ‘Mr. Minister of Culture’. Mr. Rama heard the call of duty, and answered, he says, without thinking. He soon found the straight-laced aspect of his role disagreeable, and it turned out that becoming (after getting permission) tieless was only the beginning; the restoration of blood flow to the future mayor’s head gave him the idea of opening movie theatres in Tirana, and showing popular foreign films in them, an entirely new phenomenon for Albania.

In October 2000, Mr. Rama ran as an Independent with Socialist Party support for the job of Mayor of Tirana, and won with a 54 per cent majority.

Within a month there was another attempt on his life when shots were fired into his flat.

Any idea of the artist as impractical dreamer is shattered by Edi Rama’s achievements so far. He claims still to be an artist first and most of all, and activities in public service are an extension of his aesthetic sensibility into the realm of action and life. He shrewdly appraises the legacy of communism as a cultural and social toxin that cannot be eliminated except over time, and perhaps a very long time.

But he is helping restore Tirana society’s immune system and positive attitude by, for example, the Return to Identity Programme, ruthlessly razing the haphazard and, often, environmentally seriously damaging outlaw buildings of all kinds in order to produce a clean slate on which urban planning can occur that will meet the needs of present and future generations.

He allied himself with the United Nations Development Programme in 2001, and launched the Clean and Green project in Tirana to deal with the consequences of the pollution of the Lana River, generating new green spaces and thousands of new trees. He has reduced unemployment, partly by putting Tiranans to work on such projects.

Two years after becoming mayor, Edi Rama went to New York to collect the Poverty Eradication Award from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. “I see this,” he told Voice of America TV in Albanian, “as an important event for the capital rather than my personal life... This award represents recognition for a coordinated effort among many individuals and a synergy of energies and financial resources.”

The depth and breadth of Mayor Rama’s vision and accomplishments to date belie the criticism that he is over-preoccupied with merely cosmetic changes, and that he illegitimately extends the legitimacy of his fondness for colourful shirts to a penchant for painting dull public buildings in the ‘Edi Rama colours’ of green, violet and yellow. The concise version of his reply to that charge is that it is, in essence, all to make the best possible impression on the sort of people Tirana and Albania have the most to gain by impressing favourably: foreign VIPs.

It is not as if he is unaware that the gaiety of those appearances is counterbalanced by the severe poverty that is the more apparent the farther one travels from the city centre.

Focusing the correctness of his politics on forms of integrity that matter to his constituents means that the tendency of his staff to be female and pulchritudinous should be, as far as he is concerned, of no signficance in view of the fact that they do their jobs well.

The Democratic Party of Albania in 2003 attempted to have a parliamentary commission established to investigate use of public funds by the municipality of Tirana, evidently with the intention of undermining Mr. Rama’s chances of being re-elected later in the year. They lost inasmuch as the commission, as a condition stipulated by the Socialist Party, will investigate as far back as 1992, when the Democrats themselves were in power

[edit] The "penisgate" scandal

The language of this paragraph was not neutral. This especially goes considering the currents of albanian politics. Ive made some changes. -jns (85.103.64.225 16:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC))

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Basic info missing

This is probably the result of some removals, but right now the article doesnt tell one most basic information, which year he WAS ELECTED Mayor of Tirana. The first thing we learn is that he REMAINED Mayor in 2004, which makes little sense not knowing when and how he was elected (ok, here in the censored part in the discussion page i see it was 2000). 1904.CC (talk) 21:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)