20 Years After, Albania Still In Transition, Says AIIS Report

TIRANA, Dec. 9 – Albania’s analysis of developments and state of affairs, as well as the identification of a need for further research and intellectual debate in this regard, has lead the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS), the Albanian Media Institute (AMI), the Friedrich-Ebert- Foundation (FES) and the Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD) to implement the project titled “Twenty Years After: Rethinking Democracy and State in Albania”.
“The nation, through its civil society and political actors, must reflect upon its path towards democratic governance with a critical eye on key developments and actors in the making of democracy such as elections, political parties and culture, the media, other civil society actors etc,” says the report.
It says that 20 years after the fall of the communist regime, the state, the economy and society are still in transition. And this fragile democracy should still resolve its conflict and contestation over the fundamental institution of democracy – free and fair elections.
He report covers a number of fundamental topics for the country _ democracy and the rule of law, corruption, property distribution, services, education and health, international ties and also interesting topics mentioned normally outside the country like a Greater Albania idea.
Two decades after the fall of communism, peoples’ perception about government’s performance of its main task of ensuring the personal security, living standards, quality education and health services for its citizens has changed. Thirty-seven percent of all respondents think that the government before 1990 was highly or very highly committed to guaranteeing their personal security compared to 33 percent that think the same for 2010. Over 60 percent of them identify the source of this threat as either lack of money, imminent loss of job, or housing problems.
42 percent of Albanians have a positive view of the quality of education during communism, compared to 20 percent that hold the same view for 2010. About 52 percent of respondents think of health services quality in 2010 as low or very low, while only 23 percent of them value it highly or very highly.
A majority of 69.1 percent responded that Albanians’ lives were highly or very highly threatened by the state during communism. The percentage of respondents that think that Albanians are highly or very highly threatened in 2010, on the other hand, is as low as 8 percent. Only 28 percent of the respondents think that Albanians’ lives are somewhat threatened by the state in 2010. 71.7 percent of respondents state that Albanians had little and/or very little freedom of speech during communism, while the percentage of those thinking that Albanians were highly or very highly free to speak their minds cannot even reach 4 percent. For 2010, 74.4 percent of the respondents said that Albanians enjoy freedom of speech to a high or very high extend.
A majority of 77.5 percent believe that Albanians had a strong or very strong family before 1990. Only 19.2 percent think the same for 2010. Almost half of the citizens, 47.5 percent, think that the Albanian family is relatively strong, while 27.2 percent state that it is weak or very weak. About 68 percent of respondents’ state during communism, citizens trusted each other highly or very highly. Only 1 percent of the respondents think the same for 2010, while 83.1 percent state that citizens’ trust is low or very low for that same year.
Almost 23 percent of the respondents classify Albania as a full-fledged democratic state. almost 50 percent of respondents believe that international community has played the most important role in Albanian democratization. Among the domestic factors, 28.2 percent of respondent attribute the most important role to the citizens, 12.7 percent to the two main parties and 9.1 percent to the government.
Contentious politics and the boycott of the parliament by the Socialist Party after general elections of June 2009 may be one of the main reasons for identifying the power struggle and lack of free and fair elections as the main problems of the Albanian politics today.
Data show that there is a great difference in living standards prior to 1990 and in 2010. About 71 percent of respondents describe living conditions prior to 1990 as bad or very bad. Only 23.8 percent of the respondent said that their living conditions are bad in 2010. The economic situation for 2010 is described as good by almost 31 percent of respondents, as moderate by 24.8 percent, and as bad and/or very bad from 34.5 percent. Almost 30 percent of respondents view the course Albania has taken in economy as moderately satisfying or satisfying. Only 13 percent of Albanians are moderately satisfied, satisfied, or very satisfied with the property redistribution process. Over 34 percent of respondents blame corruption in those local institutions, 26 percent blame the incapacity of local government, and 15 percent blame inadequate laws and policies on privatization and redistribution.
The majority of respondents state that they used to respect laws more during communism than in 2010. Criminals, people with right connections, the rich and policemen all were identified as standing above the law from 34 to 44 percent of the respondents. Politicians, on the other hand, have been identified as standing above the law by 89 percent of respondents. In 2010, 76 percent think that illegal activity is highly or very highly developed compared to only 1 percent that think the same for the period before 1990. 70 percent of Albanians think that bribes are very important to attain a transaction or to have a service from state agencies.
From the 26 percent of respondents that think the Albanian government has been influenced from other states, Italy is ranked first with 44 percent, followed by Greece with 35 percent, USA 12 percent, and Serbia 9 percent. Respondents are almost equally divided in their responses about the two states that present a threat to the country’s security, respectively 51.6 percent for Serbia and 47.9 percent for Greece.
Another area of inquiry was the respondents’ perception about the Albanian-Kosova relations, much telling also on the idea of a Greater Albania. The respondents were asked to assess a possible unification of Albania with Kosovo. Only 9 percent of respondents think view Albanian-Kosovo unification as positive; 37 percent view it as neither positive nor negative; while 35 percent think that such unification is negative. 19 percent are undecided or do not know how to answer to this question.
That is an indication which raises a lot of questions to what Gallup International showed in a recent poll, that Albanians were much in favor of unification.
Half of the respondents believe that there is little or very little possibility of unification. If a referendum about Albanian-Kosovo unification was to be held on the day of the survey, 39 percent would have voted in favor of the unification. The number who would have voted against counts 23 percent of the respondents, while 33 percent would abstain and would not take part in the referendum.