YouSaid · the spoken record

Edi Rama

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48
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2022-09-23
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2022-09-23
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  1. “I was so shocked when Alistair said to me yesterday we are doing well, we are fourth or fifth in the championship. I said how the bar can be so low. I don't understand.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Thank you, Rory. Thank you, Alistair. It was an honor to be in this wonderful country. It is a wonderful version of the House of Commons. If the House of Commons was like your podcast, I'm sure people be enchanted again of politics.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Thing This was the biggest inspiration. It was like a mirage. I didn't decide at that moment, but I envied Tony Blair. I envied this young new politician coming and breaking the old house with this completely new spirit. wave of change and this rock star type of communication and all this. And then I started to follow and follow and follow all the way. And practically the first thing I did when I became leader of the party, I started the third way thing. And the one man, one vote process and many more. And I'm happy to see that Third Way still works for them who are not afraid of it and especially for them who Are not in denial of it. It has been so big pain to see the Labour Party going in very incomprehensible denial of what the achievements were of the new Labour. And I hope now is the moment that they can recover.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Know it's all to be seen. And the great thing with Alistair, which I think it's shown also by this podcast, is that he's very successful in things that even him does not expect before. I'm sure that he'll find something else to do when it comes to do something together. And I'd be very pleased to embark with him in his horse. but please not to kill another conservative prime minister this song. He can do with his own, not with me.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “There are even cases when second marriages work. So maybe Britain will come back one day to remarry with Europe. It looks like impossible today, but maybe one day they'll rethink of it. Because, you know, being alone, surrounded by water, it's not always so amusing.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Listen, it's the first time in our history that we have chosen with our free will where we want to be. For centuries, we have been where we didn't choose and where we were not asked under different regimes in different places, but never where we belong, which is, let's say, the Western civilization. And in 1990, when the anti-regime movement succeeded, the slogan was, we want Albania like Europe. Sometimes, you know, it's embarrassing to have to answer the question Britain is leaving, you are entering. And it feels a bit like, you know, divorcing and telling to young men in love, don't marry. It doesn't work. Everyone has to go through the marriage to realize that maybe it's not so amazing, so divorcing has never stopped others to marry.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “The European Union made a shameful mistake, and then they started to bring vaccines. And I said to them when we were back in the council, don't do it again with the energy crisis. If you have a package to support the countries of the European Union with extra money to mitigate the huge cost of the energy, don't let the Balkans out because it will be another example of saying something and meaning something else and doing something completely different.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And guess what? The pandemic comes. They are all in their moment of uncertainty, chaos. And they gather and they distribute vaccines within the EU countries and no one dose comes to us. So we are, as I said, in the middle of Europe, and we are connected to the European life in all ways with people living in Europe, with TVs from Europe. And we felt like fishes out of water. And what we did, we ran to Turkey, to China and to Russia. And it was Turkey that provided vaccine for Albanians. It was China that provided vaccines for Serbia and other parts. It was Russia that provided some to some others. So without these three heads of the devil, let's say, would not have survived.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And practically we are a country that is 100% renewables. We are based, our electricity is fully based on hydro production. So we don't have Russian gas. We don't have Russia here in any shape or form, only with an embassy that has removed lately because we named the road of the embassy free Ukraine. And their envelopes were coming, Russian embassy free Ukraine, Russian embassy for Ukraine. So now they moved in another place. Let's see what will happen. China is also not very present in Albania. We have a normal relation, but not that much. But beyond that, I have to bring the attention on one point. In Europe, they speak more and more about geopolitics. They speak more and more about Western Balkans. They speak more and more about not letting what they call third actors to fill the void.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Listen, because of our history in Albania, we have a very particular situation. In our history, we had Stalin here standing in the main square until 1990. So our guys thought that Khrushchev was too soft, that the Soviet Union empire was a bench of traitors, that they abandoned Stalin, and with that they gave up the cause. So they left the Soviet bloc, they left the Warsaw Treaty, and they went to China. They went to China, and we got with Stalin also the worst of China, the cultural revolution of the 60s. What we desperately need.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It's not a matter of being happy, it's a matter of finally having understood that you don't pick your neighbors and your neighbors are there to stay. So the choice is very, very clear. Or you look for trouble and troubles will hit you and will make your life more difficult, or you look for peace and cooperation. So working in this second direction, we can see much more benefits for the future and we can build the peace we need.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Process we have started in the Western Balkan of rapprochement, collaboration, building peace, open Balkan initiative and all this. Serbia made a long way on the other side because it was a huge surprise. They voted three times against Russia and the United Nations. To expel Russia from the Human Rights Committee. So as far as this sanction thing will not be so pressuring to break it, I'm not much preoccupied.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Now within these borders, within EU, Russia has its most obvious influence from Republika Srpska in Bosnia to Serbia itself to Montenegro partly and to North Macedonia. So let's say in this Slav Orthodox world, there is a lot of Russian influence. 99.3% think that Putin is wrong. While in Serbia, 80% of Serbs think that Putin is a hero showing his bolts to the West. And I was preoccupied because, of course, Putin tried to use its influence to disrupt here in the Western Balkans. And this could happen in a certain way easy if the West would push Serbia beyond a certain limit to sanction Russia. Serbia cannot sanction Russia because physically is impossible. They cannot leave a day without the Russian gas. This would disrupt”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “In this moment, I'm less preoccupied. I was very preoccupied in the beginning because Western Balkans, first of all, I think that the European Union is the only geographical reality in the history of the maps with one outside border and one inside border. And within this inside border is the Western Balkans. So you cannot enter the Western Balkans without entering EU. And you have to enter EU and to get out of EU to be in the Western Balkans. And you cannot get out of the Western Balkans without re-entering EU. So it's like having the stomach within your body, but somehow circumscripted with a border.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “For Iraq, he has, of course, the conviction that was in breach of international law. But when it comes to Kosovo, it's much more to him a twin case of Crimea, so a land that was taken from one state in the name of the people living there while Crimea is a land taken back to the state where it belongs in the name of people living there.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “repeats the word Kosovo many times, especially since the war started he speaks about Kosovo many times because in his mind, in his idea of the international law, Kosovo is the mirror where everyone who participated in its liberation should see his own hypocrisy while talking about Crimea. In his mind, Kosovo is the biggest example of how the Western world, America and its allies, broke brutally international law. And Crimea, in his mind, is the detector of this big hypocrisy.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I think Emmanuel Macron has another problem. People, especially in France, they really don't know who he really is. And it's a pity that he cannot transmit when he is in public how interesting he is, how human he is, how Much respectful is of people, how curious he is to listen. It's really incredible to have the president of France write text you out of the blue and say, how you see things? Tell me, what do you think like this? So it means that he's someone absolutely A lot, maybe not absolute, but a lot different from what the French think that he's an arrogant boy that he doesn't really feel people, he doesn't really care about anything else than the rich, it's not true at all. He's someone with vision, with ambition. But I don't know what's missing that doesn't make the right connection with people.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “He wants to bring me the horse. You know this. You're talking about paintings. There is another famous painting with death, with a young lady in the horse. So Alistair now wants me to be the young lady that with the innocent face of...”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You couldn't turn. She was someone that didn't need and didn't feel the need to be charmed. She was very gentle, very kind, but being uncharmable is the highest level of the respect and of self-awareness and dignity. I think it's amazing. She was not someone you could charm.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Maybe in this decade it is very easy to be the best in Europe. Competition not very big. Yes, I think she saved the honor of Europe and the honor of our civilization the moment she stood very strong in front of the huge wave of refugees in 2015. This was amazing against all Poles, against all public opinions, against all the fears and the unknown. She stood. And this was an incredible moment of feeling the privilege to know her. And then I think, yes, she was great in the sense that she never spoke wishful thinking. She always prepared herself. She always stick to the facts. She always tried to be truthful. And, you know, I think Angela Merkel was someone you could not charm.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “But because it needs time, it needs a lot of time. And then I said, okay, about how many Mondays you are going to win to do that. No, I mean, he's a lot of continuity. I think it's totally unfair to criticize him based on the comparison with Angela when she left. And I believe if people try to remember Angela in her first months in office, I'm sure she and Scholz would be again the same. So she was not the Angela we know now. She was much more fragile, much more secure, much more. So I think he has all to be Angela all the way.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “To tell you one thing that is not a joke, it's a real thing. When I met Schultz, In Angela's office, and I sat in front of him for some minutes. I was in a very strange state of mind because I was thinking it was she presenting herself as a man in front of me. Same, same, same, same posture, same place of the hands, same way of looking, same way of reacting, same pace of the voice. The moment I realized it was not her, but was him, was when he said, I'm very committed to bring Albania and the Western Balkans in the EU during my mandate. She never said that.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “If we see Albania today with the eyes from where we started, it's like day and night. If we see Albania tomorrow from the ice where we are, it's night and day. So we need to make a lot yet. It's a long way.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Was very, very heavily damaging because it shut down the digital services. We have today 95% of the services that until yesterday were given in long lines, implying a lot of bribery in the cloud, so in digital. So you don't see anyone. You don't need to talk to anyone in your iPhone. You ask for a license. You ask for a permission. You ask for your medical status. You ask for more than a thousand things. And you get them online. So this means that all this part of corruption is gone for the people.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “This being said, I think we have done incredible, incredible work, and we have achieved incredible results in fighting exactly this type of corrupt because corruption in the scale of undermining the law for big profit is everywhere. The problem with the developing countries, which you don't find in developed countries, is that corruption touches everyone. It touches you as a citizen when you want a service, touches you as a father or a parent, when you want your kid to go to the school he or she deserves, touches you as a young guy getting out of university when you want to have a job. So corruption interferes everywhere. And I think we have been corruption in many ways in that level, the cyber attack.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yes, because our cholesterol was zero because we didn't have much to eat and we were on vegetables, no meat, no alcohol, no nothing. So we were a country with no heart attacks. So heart attacks and cholesterol came with democracy.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Noy, during communism we never heard about the word corruption. Word corruption came with a new vocabulary. In my memory, I don't recall to have heard the word corruption. Cry, yes, there were some petite crime, but organized crime, no, because organized crime by definition is transnational. It has to do with trafficking, it has to do with smuggling, it has to do with a lot of activities that imply borders, imply interactions. So we didn't have that. But we didn't have many other things during communism. For example, Albania was, I think, the country with the lowest heart attacks in the world.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “First of all, you should have known already after so many episodes that when Alistair passed a message, there is always a spin. I didn't And I never deny that we have problems with corruption and we have also problems with corruption. Because we are not yet in stage of a modern country that provides for the citizens all the service and all the standards that make corruption unnecessary, because corruption at the end, when it comes to developing countries, is an alternative of the state. It's a service that is given in a not legal way. Because the state is somehow being late or being lazy or being unable to give this service.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “It always like a rumor coming out and then some are going and then some relatives there are calling and then the noises that in Britain you have now some opportunity because there is a vacuum created there we can feel it's how it works.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “It's very important to understand. But this being said, we are cooperating with the British authorities. We are setting some operations to tackle the traffickers because the terrible part of it is that this is a very lucrative business for traffickers.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Small boats is a sad story, frankly. Although it's an unclear story because there are numbers we see in the British media that do not really match with the numbers we see. In our own sites, so this increase, there was a very interesting article in The Guardian that was somehow questioning these numbers. But beyond that, we need to know from where these people come in. They are Albanians, yes, but they are Albanians from Albania, Albanians from Kosovo, they are Albanians from other Albanian areas. They are coming from Albania or they are coming from France or they are coming from Greece or from Italy. We had the same situation with France some time ago. We had the same situation with Germany some time ago. And when Germany declared the safe origin and simply didn't accept anymore to put the people in an asylum-seeking procedure by giving them funds, social assistance, house and so on, they moved to France. And now they are moving towards England.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “And then the Afghans, the Afghans that were left behind in that mess of Kabul airport and the getting out of the NATO forces without really having had a plan what we will do for them who work for us there, who stood for us, who believed in us. And I found this was not right. So we opened the doors for some thousands of Afghans. And so it's in our DNA, let's say. And we don't regret it. And we do it again and again and again because In the same time, we have been once in need to be sheltered from others. So we left Albania not from an Islamic or a Taliban religious regime, but from an atheist regime. We were thousands with the boats going to Italy to ask for help, for food, for shelter. And we are here today in this new stage of our history because someone helped us before. In small boats?”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “We think because we have sheltered here some thousands of refugees that are not amicable to their regime, to say the least. And we did it in a fully humanitarian basis. They were in Camp Liberty in Iraq. They were massacred and raided every two weeks, every three weeks by the Iranian Secret Service and kids and women were killed. So we accepted to shelter them. Albania has always been keen to give shelter to people in trouble. We have done it during the Second World War. Albania was the only country to have more Jews after the war than before. And with clean record of no one Jew delivered to the Nazis by an Albanian family or citizen, then we sheltered half a million Kosovars, you know, because you were part of that epic moment.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “So, the Iran thing has to do with a heavy cyber attack on us that we worked very, very thoroughly to Understand who was behind it and the attribution is not based on Assessments that come from speculation, but is based on a forensic. On proofs and on the hard work of some super special teams that we had with us from Microsoft, from US, even UK experts had to look in it. So we had 100% proof that the Islamic Republic of Iran was behind it. So we had to retaliate with the severance of our diplomatic ties.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Every time because this Alistair on the horse with his sword and his iPhone is in front of my eyes many times. And every time I used to see it, I used to just pity Boris to have behind him someone so obsessed to kill him as well.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “This drawing of Alistair in my wallpaper was premonatory of the incursion the crusade would make against Boris Johnson, you know, because his iPhone. And his sword and his horse. Oh, that's”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Because it's part of hours and hours in office, meetings and meetings. And while I am focused on talking with the people that are in front of me or are in the phone, my hand and my eyes continue to do their job, to somehow keep me balanced. And that's why, and their sophistication depends a lot from the length of the time spent in office or from the length of the meeting.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Together, I realized that there was something there. And I go back at my office very sad, very, very down. The guy was under some charges at the time, and I said to my assistant, I am afraid that I will prove that he is a thief. He has stolen all my art. No, you have much more. And she opened her shelf. It was full of doodles. I was doing all the time in office without even. And then she conspired with a friend from the academy. Former friend in the arts academy, they brought some doodles in an exhibition, and then this started to get out. And then a German gallerist came to me to see me because he saw the book I did.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Listen, the most serious part of my paintings and my art is the part that I didn't do it seriously, which is a part that I did while I was engaged in politics as Minister of Culture, sitting in the government meetings. I've never entered a government building until becoming a Minister of Culture. As an artist, I never wanted to enter a government building or an office or whatever. Never had an office life. And so I couldn't stand the long hours of the Council of Ministers, so I was doodling and doodling and doodling and doodling. And my colleague, Minister of Education, was near me telling me after every session, can I take it and he took and took and took. And one day I go to visit him for some other reason. And at the end he says to me, do you want to see my art collection? I said, do you have an art collection? And he has a whole portfolio with my doodles.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Maybe I don't think Rory got in this conclusion while he was still in politics. I think after leaving politics, he started to realize that he was somehow handicapped and started to see that something was missing here, something was missing there from the pieces he knew he had before entering politics. I don't know. I have to make this check up when I get out. But I think that in one way doing art in the same time helps me to keep some balance, to keep some sanity. And in the same time, yes, politics makes you more and more keen to forget about sentiments and more and more taken by results, results, results. And, of course, there is something kind of barbarization of your soul.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “I don't think that he was any more passionate when I could have, let's say, conversations that I could analyze in a certain age. But I think it was a very strong combination between inertia and an amount of fear, an amount of practicality, because at the end, you know, we were totally isolated from West, from east, we were North Korea of Europe. So many of them, people that when they were younger, embraced communism as an inspiration, as an ideal, turned to be practically people that were, you know, that gave up in their own silence. But on the other hand, this was part of me. Being involved in the anti communist movement in the arts academy and which was practically the seed of what then became my political career.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “I believe that there were many like him that came from poor or let's say not rich families and had the chance to get out, look the world, be Soviet Union have their studies be inspired by this revolutionary flame coming back to build paradise on earth and then slowly understanding that they were participating in the building of the hell on earth. And so”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Yes, my father was one of the most prominent official sculptures of the regime. He was part of this group of sculptures that basically made the most important monuments. Professionally, absolutely respectful, but ideologically, and also in terms of The methods, absolutely something that I was fully against. So with my father, we had a very strong but also very intense relation in the sense that I didn't like anything he did and he didn't really want me to do anything I did because he was somehow afraid of me ending up badly. But I value very much this relation because he was a liberal person. He never tried to impose me doing anything.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Somewhere in politics was when I was in Paris buying a newspaper the aftermath of the victory of the new labor. And then things happened in a way that I was back in Tirana to bury my father, living as an artist in Paris. It was the same day that there was a reshuffle of government. So what could not happen anywhere else and can happen always in the Balkans is that you go to bury your father and you become Minister of Culture. And then the rest is known”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “I would not at all accept that I was an internationally serious basketball player, played few international games from the bench. But at the end was a fantastic experience of understanding teamship, understanding leadership, understanding solidarity and also conflict and so many things that sport gives to you. While me being here today as Prime Minister interviewed by Alistair Campbell is another miracle of life because I would not have been in politics if Alistair Campbell would not exist and if Tony Blair would not exist and if third way would not exist and if new labor would not exist so the time I saw myself I had a mirage of myself being in”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “First of all, I have to set the record straight. I was not a serious international basketball player. I was a mediocre national basketball player. And the reason why I played basketball, first of all, was my asthma. My parents thought that it was good for me to play basketball, to fight my asthma, which was true. Secondly, the reason why I was taken and make all the way to the national team was because I was particularly tall in that time particularly short Albania. And thirdly, yes, I try to be up to the task.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “It was very insightful about the state of affairs nowadays. It was very insightful about Russia, about China, also very interesting. It was very insightful about the inner struggles of someone who is in politics and who has this permanent. Chall Be in or to get out and when is the time to get out and how much you can stay in and so on and so further. So if I would say it all, I would say although he didn't beat Tony Blair, In the life after politics, it seemed happier than Tony Blair. So let's.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I think it was the best episode of the series. because it's not at all something you can get often nowadays so gracious, so insightful, and so humble. Man coming from Solong life in politics.”

    2022-09-23 · The Rest Is Politics · 54. Albanian PM Edi Rama on Putin, Macron, and combating corruption · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source