Berisha, Sali (1941– )

Albanian political leader, president 1992–97 and prime minister from 2005. He cofounded the Democratic Party (DP), the country's first opposition party, which swept to power in the March 1992 general election. A month later, Berisha became Albania's first noncommunist president since the end of World War II.

Berisha's presidency oversaw gradual, market-centred economic reform and entry into the Council of Europe. However, he was criticized for endorsing state control of the media and for thwarting the efforts of his socialist opponents, who boycotted the May–June 1996 general election. In 1997 Berisha faced mounting unrest and the effective rebellion of southern Albania in the wake of the collapse of bogus pyramid ‘investment’ schemes in which half the population had participated. He resigned as president after his party was trounced in the June–July 1997 legislature elections, but was re-elected as leader of the DP in October 1997. His support base in northern Albania remained barely under government control, and, in March 1998, he called to the West to intervene in neighbouring Kosovo province where Serbs were accused of genocide against the Albanian population.

Born in Tropoja, Berisha was educated at the University of Tirana and was a low-ranking member of the ruling communist Albanian Workers' Party (SPA). He was elected a deputy to the People's Assembly in 1981. Following a career as a teacher and physician at the Clinic of Cardiology at a hospital in Tirana, he was elected a member of the European Committee on Medical Scientific Research in 1986.