TIRANA, March 28 – The saga of protests over the much-debated children’s playground in Tirana’s main park entered a new chapter this week after fresh scuffles with police led to the arrest of several opposition supporters.
What started as a protest of the civil society about a month and a half ago has seemingly been hijacked by politics, with many opposition MPs backed by the Democratic Party youth wing and hundreds of supporters staging a protest against the playground’s construction on Monday.
The latter attempted to tear down the enclosure of the construction site, and as a result police in riot gear stepped in resulting in clashes between police and protesters.
Three female police officers were reportedly injured in the scuffles.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen protesters were arrested including a former Democratic Party MP. Media reports emerged that opposition MP Gent Strazimiri was carrying what appeared to be a firearm in the protest. A DP senior figure denied the allegations calling it a media speculation saying all Strazimiri was carrying was a “cell phone case.”
Both sides did not spare accusations immediately after the latest protest with opposition leader Lulzim Basha calling the arrests arbitrary and accusing Prime Minister Edi Rama of bypassing the law by allowing the construction of the playground without an environmental permit and without a decision of the National Territory Council.
Meanwhile, Rama replied on social media by calling the opposition clueless and of using the park to vent out its anger at the government.
The violent protest appears to have heated up the political scene and now threatens to spoil the fragile consensus reached on some key issues of the justice reform following foreign mediation. A meeting of the ad hoc committee on justice reform scheduled for Tuesday was reportedly cancelled following the tense political climate.
Nonetheless, consensus had already proved short-lived as the opposition walked out of the talks in the ad hoc parliamentary committee last week placing as condition the interpretation by the Constitutional Court of the mandates of two majority MPs on conflict of interest allegations.
The construction of the children’s playground initially met with the protest of civil society activists claiming that its construction threatens to destroy one of the last remaining green areas in a capital grappling with smog and congestion.
Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj has shrugged off such claims and has responded to criticism by getting involved in a major tree planting push in the city.
