Tirana Times
TIRANA, Feb. 2 – Ambassador Eugen Wollfarth of the OSCE Presence in Albania on Wednesday urged all political parties to comply fully with the Electoral Code by sending in their respective nominations for commission members to the Central Election Commission (CEC) without delay.
none of the political parties have so far submitted their full lists of names to the CEC. the deadline for submitting the names of commissioners for the second level-election commissions was 24 January. The deadline for the CEC to constitute all commissions is 7 February.
“The Albanian people and the country’s international partners expect to see local government elections take place on 8 May, as decreed by the President of the Republic. The Central Election Commission is in the process of preparing for these elections. Their work would be made easier if all political parties act immediately and respect the law by providing the names of all election commissioners by the deadline,” said Wollfarth.
“We expect all other legal deadlines to be fully respected, just as we expect all CEC members to participate in all meetings,” he added.
Opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama comes out and every time reacting to the existing political crisis stresses that “under such conditions it would be illusionary to think of holding the local elections.” At the same time he says that his party has never thought of boycotting the May 8 local elections.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha has always said that the May 8 elections will be held with or without the opposition, also pledging they will be the best ever in this country.
But this post-communist country has always suffered from holding not regular elections.
But what does this mean?
What Rama is saying means, in practice, that the elections of May 8 will either be held in strange conditions and the opposition will accept but always claim irregularities, or they may go to the ultimate fight of boycotting them.
In the latter case they may pretend and try to push the international community to exert pressure on Berisha to hold them again or turn the eyes to the fresh parliamentary elections as well.
This is what they did in 1996 but that year and in 1997 they were also assisted from the failure of the pyramid investment schemes, the Ponzi schemes, which took the people to the streets.
This year it is very different.
True the political situation is deteriorating every day with the opposition claiming holding fresh polls. But the government is stuck in its position that the next parliamentary election is in 2013.
There will be a lot of international pressure and mediation to convince the Socialists to get into the parliament and get ready for the May 8 polls. At this moment it seems those efforts will give no result.
If Europe and the United States can exert pressure on the government and the governing Democratic Party in different ways, the pressure on the opposition Socialists that are now without powers should be different.
And moreover there should be a higher or ultimate goal which is not only to hold elections in time or in a proper way and to please both political groupings, but also to bring a different political climate in this country which is not going to be threatened any moment that a political party, be that a little one, decides to only to achieve its goals.
