Albania brings back home Zogu’s remains

TIRANA, Nov. 15 – On Saturday the remains of its only post-independence monarch, King Ahmet Zogu I, will be brought from France where he died in 1961.
The return ceremony is to be held this Saturday, just ahead of celebrations for Albania’s 100th independence anniversary on Nov. 28.
Zogu reigned from 1928 until 1939, when he fled after Albania was occupied by fascist Italy.
Albania’s post-World War II communist regime abolished the monarchy in 1946, and the country remained a parliamentary republic after the fall of communism in 1990.
The royal family returned home in 2002 after a failed attempt earlier. A referendum held in 1997 did not accept the return of the country into a monarchy. Albania is a parliamentary republic.
A small royalist party is allied to the governing Democratic Party’s coalition of Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
Zogu was survived by his son, Leka, who died in 2011, and his nephew Crown Prince Leka II.
Berisha was first against Zogu’s return and in Leka’s first attempt in the early 1990s he was pushed back and not let live in the country.
After 1997, when Berisha fell from power following the popular unrest in losing their life savings in the failed pyramid investment schemes, there started the new ‘love affair’ between the monarchists and the Democrats, now in power since 2005.
Berisha has been a strong supporter of the re-imposition of Zogu’s figure as one of the country’s main personalities in last century. He promoted his party and has held it in his governing coalition since then. Leka II has always been an adviser to the foreign minister, or now to the Tirana mayor. That seems a good step to have their support especially ahead of the parliamentary elections next year.
Such a promotion from the prime minister has found or sparked some other reactions. Some historians area against such a promotion reminding that Zogu left the country when fascist Italy occupied it in 1939 without shooting a single bullet and always asked for his throne while in exile.
A farewell ceremony was held Wednesday at the Thiais cemetery in Paris, France. The chief of protocol of the French president, the Paris prefect and other personalities and officials took part (based on the announcement made earlier from the royal family in Tirana).
On Saturday the ceremony will start and b held for two hours at the Palace of Brigades, Zogu’s home built by his friends and businessmen on the occasion of his wedding. After that the funeral ceremony will be held at the royal mausoleum.