The US President-elect, Donald Trump, during a rally in Florida. Photo: Trump Facebook page

In a surprise move, the Mayor of Kamza, Xhelal Mziu, a town of more than 100,000 inhabitants near the Albanian capital, has declared US President-elect Donald Trump an Honorary Citizen.

Mziu, who comes from the opposition centre-right Democratic Party, announced the decision on a Facebook post and on the council website.

“City hall members voted unanimously for the decision with the motivation”, the decision reads, having agreed that the victorious US Republican was “a revolutionary model for the new democratic order, an expert in the economy, a deal-maker in foreign policy, a popular wise communicator and a leader for modern times,” the council decision reads.

A short biography of Trump accompanied the news, including in its argument for the award Trump’s decision not to draw his wages as US President.

“Donald Trump represents the best of New York values and offers hope for all Americans who with reason feel betrayed by the political class,” the argument continued.

While Mziu’s post was greeted by some as a wise one that should be followed by other municipalities around Albania, others ridiculed the decision.

“Are you going to mail Trump the decision that you took?” one commentator asked with some irony.

Some considered the move a deliberate jab at Albania’s centre-left Prime Minister, Edi Rama, who made no secret of his support for Trump’s rival, the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.

In April, Rama said in an interview on CNN: “God forbid” that Trump becomes next US President.

This is not the first time that Kamza has tried to draw attention by honouring major world personalities.

The former longtime mayor, Xhelal Mziu, in 2013 initiated the practice of naming streets after international leaders and statesmen and big foreign cities.

As a result, the street plan for Kamza lists streets named after George W Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk alongside Manhattan, Paris, London and more.

The current Mayor of Kamza is also a man with some controversies of his own. In December 2013 he was accused of rigging a road tender in the municipality worth around 570,000 euros.

He denied wrongdoing, arguing that the aggrieved company had been disqualified for lacking the right documents. The Appeal Court later dismissed the charges, ruling that no criminal actions had occurred.

Before 1990 Kamza was just an agricultural area near the capital, Tirana.However, large-scale migration in the 1990s turned it into a populous area, full of people who had moved from the rural north to seek a better life near Tirana.