Albania's prime minister refuses to resign as student led protests battle police in Tirana for a third day

Tirana has had three days of this, and its prime minister says he is going nowhere.

Thousands of student led protesters fought running battles with riot police in the Albanian capital again on Thursday. They smashed windows, shattered bus stops and traffic lights, set light to a kiosk and to garbage bins, laid barricades and raided a bank. Police fired tear gas, sound grenades and water cannon. Parliament cancelled its session. The streets the marchers left behind were littered with burned out bins and broken glass, and the chant, taken up by high school students who joined the marches on Thursday, was Rama resign.

Edi Rama, in written responses to Reuters, refused. Governments are changed through democratic elections, he wrote. Albania had elections last year, not a revolution. He said his responsibility is to listen, address legitimate concerns and keep the country moving forward, and that stepping down would betray the voters who gave him a mandate to complete negotiations on European Union membership. He said he is ready to discuss the rising cost of education, and that attacking institutions and destroying public property has nothing to do with the legitimate demands of students.

The movement is older and wider than the student grievance. It began on May 31 with mostly peaceful protests against the sale of parts of Albania's southern coastline for a luxury resort development backed by an investment firm founded by Jared Kushner, the son in law of President Trump. The development sits by a nature reserve where flamingos live in their thousands, and the birds on the protest signs gave the movement its name. Over a summer of demonstrations the demands widened to corruption, the cost of living and the cost of education. A student who gave her name as Kiara told reporters the prime minister is the meaning of the word corruption, and that work in your field goes to whoever knows a guy who knows a guy. The conservative opposition Democratic Party has backed the protests and called for a caretaker government and early elections.

Rama's Socialists won a fourth consecutive term last year, and no parliamentary election is due until 2029. With Montenegro, Albania leads the EU accession process and aims at entry as early as 2028, which is the project Rama says the violence will not derail. The protesters say they will be in the square every day. Both sides have now said, in so many words, that time is on their side.