Albania: Prime Minister Reshuffles Cabinet

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By Besar Likmeta

Albania’s Prime Minister Sali Berisha reshuffled his cabinet on Saturday, adding three new ministers, and filling the vacancy left by the election of the Minister of Interior as President.

Flamur Noka, an MP and organizational secretary for the ruling Democratic Party was nominated as Minister of the Interior, replacing Bujar Nishani who has been elected President.

Foreign Minister Edmond Haxhinsto was moved to economy, replacing Nasip Naco. Haxhinasto will be replaced in the Foreign Ministry by the deputy mayor of Tirana, Edmond Panariti.

The Health Minister, Petrit Vasili, was also dismissed and will be replaced by the deputy speaker of parliament, Vangjel Tavo.

The ministries of Health, Economy and Foreign Affairs are controlled by the junior government partner, the Socialist Movement for Integration, LSI.

Although it only holds four parliamentary seats, the LSI came out as the kingmaker in the 2009 parliamentary elections, which were narrowly won by Berisha’s right-wing Democratic Party.

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The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.

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