After the burned chairs, Rama places dialogue invitations on stone benches outside the Prime Minister's Office

Prime Minister Edi Rama renewed his invitation to dialogue with the protesters on Thursday, this time with a gesture many read as a message to those who had destroyed the previous one. In a video posted in the morning, captioned “Good morning,” the invitations had been placed on stone benches outside the Prime Minister's Office.

A day earlier, Rama had put the dialogue chairs back outside the government building after the first ones were knocked over by protesters. The new chairs were also thrown by protesters on Wednesday, and in the evening some of them were burned on the boulevard during the only incidents of an otherwise calm day.

The third invitation and the rejection

This is the third time the prime minister has publicly invited students and lecturers to the table. During Wednesday, according to Top Channel, a student had demanded that Rama answer for the violence at the protests, and the prime minister replied: “Come to the dialogue, let's take stock face to face.”

The students again rejected the offer, insisting that their main demand remains the prime minister's resignation. The lecturers' union, led by Sandër Kovaçi, has declared an open-ended teaching boycott, and Kovaçi has said the boycott will continue until Rama steps down.

Protest outside Parliament

While Rama was in Montenegro for the Berlin Process summit, the protesters moved their rally on Thursday to outside Parliament, where a plenary session was under way. The prime minister has repeatedly said that “no reason justifies violence” and that anyone who damages public property will answer to the law, while the opposition accuses the government of excessive use of force.