Opposition insists on massive protests

TIRANA, Oct 21 – Leader of the opposition Socialist Party Edi Rama has called on the party supporters to gather at a large protest next month in Tirana.
The socialists announced that they would not return to the Albanian parliament until the election results are checked.
The opposition accuses Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party of election fraud. The Socialists are boycotting the new Albanian parliament and call for an investigation into the election results.
The Democrats reject the election fraud accusations. Albania held its parliamentary election on June 28, 2009.
The opposition already held a similar protest Oct. 10 in capital Tirana and another one last week in southern Berat.
They have been asking for the creation of an investigative parliamentary commission to check scores of ballot boxes they claim have been wrongly (on purpose) counted by the governing Democrats.
In another sign of protest the opposition Socialists have declared the boycott of some partial local elections Nov. 15 to fill the posts of five lawmakers at the local level.
The Socialists are determined to continue their protest though no one is saying how long it will last and how they are to come out of that.
A small group among the Socialists lawmakers, about five of them, have declared themselves against such a protest and the boycott saying that is only lowering their party’s image. But they still respect the party’s decision.
The governing Democrats on their side say that the parliament is the right place to hold such a debate. But Berisha has also said that the legal and other electoral authorities had completed the consideration of the opposition complaints and the ballot boxes cannot be opened any more.
The international community is calling on the opposition to end the boycott and also on the government to find a way out of this political crisis.
The absence of the opposition lawmakers at the parliament does not let it pass many laws which require a three-fifths or 83 votes, a number which cannot be filled solely with Democrats and their allies which have only 75 seats in the 140-seat parliament.