Albanian town makes Donald Trump honorary citizen

TIRANA: An Albanian town has made Donald Trump an honorary citizen, hailing the US president-elect as “revolutionary” following his victory at the polls.

The town hall in Kamza, a few kilometres (miles) north of Albania’s capital Tirana, unanimously voted to give Trump the honour on Wednesday.

“Donald Trump is a revolutionary model of the new democratic order” and “a great leader of modern times,” Kamza’s mayor Xhelal Mziu said.

Trump “won his battle in spite of media attacks,” said Mziu, who belongs to the right-wing opposition to Prime Minister Edi Rama.

During the US campaign Rama made no secret of his preference for defeated Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, who won fans among ethnic Albanians for her husband Bill Clinton’s role in the NATO campaign against Serbia during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war.

Kamza has a history of honouring foreign leaders, with streets named after France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy’s former premier Silvio Berlusconi and Britain’s ex-PM Tony Blair, among others.

The town of around 100,000 inhabitants also has roads named after Paris, New York and Tokyo.

“We can always close our eyes and dream that we are in Paris or New York, but when we open them, reality is hard,” sighed Kamza resident Jeta, 57, a mother of four.

Kamza has grown eradically over the years with an influx of people from the mountains, driven by poverty to relocate in the town.

The mayor on his Facebook page posted a photo of himself making a victory sign next to an image of Trump doing the same.