From Dhurata Cupi
Edi Rama has lost many bets since he was elected prime minister.
He lost the bet of free legalizations. Lost the free health bet. He lost the bet of victory over organized crime in the first 300 days of government. 3800 days have passed since Edi Rama came to power and organized crime is not impossible, but co-government.
Edi Rama’s lost bets are mainly electoral frauds to come to power, but he has the ability and the propaganda opportunity to serve failure as success.
He is doing this now with the other lost bet, that of online sports betting. 4 years after the radical campaign, led by the Leader himself, to shut down everything to do with gambling, today we have opened a place that allows online sports betting.
Just as we woke up some time ago as the country that allowed casinos, even those cursed every day of the campaign by the prime minister. Edi Rama allowed casinos in 5-star hotels only 2 years after he banned them. This casino was Edi Rama’s first lost bet related to gambling. The return of online betting is the second gambling bet that Edi Rama loses in relation to his promises to Albanians.
With the conviction that Edi Rama never does what he says, I warned about this game of the prime minister during the discussions of the prohibition law in Parliament in October-November 2018. It is worth noting that then the government did not foresee the closure of online betting and there was pressure ours, of the opposition MPs, who brought facts of the connection between the government and the online monitoring concessionaire, which forced Edi Rama to add the closure of online betting. “Don’t get tired in vain, – You can’t escape bets anymore! Both betting and this online monopoly will be dead by the New Year.” The quote belongs to Edi Rama on October 14, 2018. It is clearly understood that the address is for the opposition, for the sole fact that we denounced socialist connections with online sports betting.
Now they become legal, after a period of staggering profits made in illegitimacy, with the knowledge of the prime minister and every police chief, from north to south. In contrast to the ban campaign, this time, during the permitting process, without much fanfare, what I have not seen are the prime minister’s crocodile tears for families suffering from gambling.
When the bets were closed, the Leader lamented the plight of women with gambling husbands who had put their families in debt. This is indeed a social blight, but the Leader has forgotten it now.
In the new law, it was not even mentioned that, from the hundreds of millions of euros that the state will benefit over the years, it should set up a fund to identify and treat people with gambling addictions. This is an experience that many EU countries have included in their legislation. Or at least, he should have taken the trouble to do a real survey on how the citizens expected this reversal of his promise to close the betting.
Similarly, Edi Rama forgot the red alert that organized crime and money laundering are hidden behind gambling. “Gambling activity in Albania is financed to a large extent by organized crime.
They are sources of criminal financing, they are money that is laundered through gambling activity”. This is another quote from Edi Rama on October 22, 2018. And this one about organized crime and money laundering in online gambling is Edi Rama’s next lost bet. But I firmly believe, that all are lost bets willingly. If it were otherwise, in the new law approved by the Parliament, mechanisms aimed at preventing money laundering in online gambling would have been provided for. A policy that does not interest a prime minister like Edi Rama, who, as his former deputy prime minister describes, decides on wealth and enrichment while eating meatballs on the porch. His favorite gambling!
