Sali Berisha

Prime Minister of Albania

15 October 1944 Viçidol, Kukës, Albania

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11 September 2005 – 13 September 2013

Albanian politician (born 1944) Sali Ram Berisha (Albanian pronunciation:  ; born 15 October 1944) is an Albanian conservative politician who served as the second President of Albania from 1992 to 1997 and Prime Minister from 2005 to 2013. He was also the leader of the Democratic Party of Albania twice, from 1991 to 1992 and then again from 1997 to 2013. A former secretary of the committee of the Party of Labor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tirana, he abandoned his career as a cardiologist and university professor to become the chairman of the Democratic Party in the 1990s. From 1992, after the fall of communism, he served as the first non-Communist President of Albania until his government collapsed in 1997 in the wake of the collapse of notorious pyramid schemes. From 1997 to 2005, Albania was governed by the Socialist Party (PS) for two mandates, while he stayed in opposition. In 2005, the Democratic Party won the general elections, and he became the Prime Minister after his coalition formed the new government. In 2009, he was re-elected Prime Minister, after the Democrats obtained a narrow win in the general elections but were forced into a coalition with the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) through not winning enough seats on its own for the first time since the start of multi-party democracy in 1991. In the 2013 election, his government was unseated in an won coalition led by the Socialist Party and the LSI. After the loss he resigned as the leader of the Democratic Party but he continues to be a Member of Parliament as of 2021. On May 19th, 2021, US Secretary of State Mr. Antony Blinken announced the public designation of Albanian former Prime Minister Mr. Sali Berisha due to involvement in significant corruption.