Berisha repeats – ‘No ballot box opening’

TIRANA, Dec. 23 – Prime Minister Sali Berisha and leader of the governing Democratic Party repeated Wednesday that the June 28 ballot boxes would not be open to be recounted as the opposition has asked.
The opposition Socialist Party has boycotted the new parliament claiming that the counting process was bad or very bad in one-third of the offices.
The Socialists, who have 65 seats at the parliament, want a parliamentary investigation.
The Democrats, who have 71 seats in the 140-seat parliament, deny a recount should be made, saying that all the results were confirmed by the opposition members of the electoral commission and that move would violate the law.
“If we take into our hands the verdicts of the (Electoral College) court we threaten that the temple of democracy (parliament) turns into an institution of the nomenclature,” according to Berisha in his last speech at the parliament Wednesday.
The leftist Socialist Movement for Integration of Ilir Meta, with four seats in parliament, has joined the governing coalition.
Politics in Albania ended the year 2009 in a very bad way.
The two main political parties cannot tolerate each other. They cannot agree on anything and now they are also threatening the country’s future.
It seems that everybody is expecting an outside intervention or mediation by the international community to resolve the dispute.
Everybody is now mentioning efforts by representatives of western institutions and countries to mediate a roundtable or a meeting either between the two political parties, or, ideally, between Berisha and Rama to resolve their crisis.