A Failed Start?!

TIRANA – In mid-February Albania’s President Bamir Topi managed to hold round-table talks with the government and the main opposition party to end a seven-month political crisis over alleged electoral fraud.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the governing Democratic Party and Socialist Party leader Edi Rama, also Tirana’s mayor, met at Topi’s office for more than three hours.
The result? What both leaders and the president said after the meeting showed that they did meet and likely shook hands with each other. But on the idea of ending the country’s political crises (often considered an impasse, or stalemate, or deadlock to lower down its importance) that was nothing.
The Socialists have boycotted the parliament and are asking for a recount of a considerable number of ballot boxes which, they say, have been manipulated. They have also staged large protests, which they said would resume this year. At the same time they have said they are not asking for a redo of the June 28 poll results and add they have already recognized those results.
The government has ruled out and strongly opposes a recount saying that would break the laws as the results were based on the verdict of the Electoral College. Berisha’s Democrats say that opening ballot boxes means breaking the laws, the Constitution as the claimed ones have been decided upon from the Electoral College, the supreme electoral legal body created for the polls.
At the meeting the two main parties agreed to continue negotiations and asked the president to look further for ways to solve the crisis.
“We agreed that the president will continue to explore for convergence points,” said Topi after the talks. He thanked the European Union, the United States and other international institutions for assisting in the launch of the talks.
Berisha and Rama only repeated their positions and expressed their wish for the president to look for ways out of the political stalemate.
A day later the opposition convened a meeting of all the political groups to decide to postpone the street protests they had pledged to resume and wait for a week till the president made the other step.
What one may see clearly is that both sides are expecting a more direct international mediation or moderation to push them towards a compromise.
Manuel Montobbio de Balanse, Spanish ambassador to Tirana, whose country holds the EU rotating presidency, immediately hailed the start of the talks saying that was the first step in the dialogue.
“I hope that step was the first in Albania’s road of integration into the EU. The dialogue, as a political tool, is the efforts to resolve the country’s political problems within the constitutional and institutional context and that is why we encourage such an initiative of President Topi, urge him to continue his leading role,” he said after the meeting.
All international institutions present in the country, including top western countries, had urged a dialogue to resolve the crises.
There were calls from the OSCE, EU, Council of Europe and also the United States, Britain, Spain, Germany and others.
It was also learnt that, in fact, it was the western diplomats who ‘managed’, ‘urged’, or ‘obliged’ the two leaders to sit down and talk.
The president had also his diplomatic adviser present during the talks, a sign of the indirect international presence.
Saturday’s talks may be just the beginning of the negotiations expected likely to last long and also to be very difficult to find a compromise.
The international community, including the Council of Europe (which passed a resolution on Albania calling on the government to create an investigative committee and on the opposition to end the boycott), support Topi’s initiative, saying that the political crisis in Albania should be resolved through dialogue.
A Council of Europe delegation is expected in Albania by the end of the month for talks focused on the political crisis in the country. There are hints they had planned it for Feb. 22 but they may come earlier as they were not satisfied by the result of Saturday’s talks.
The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly said that the crisis “has deeply affected” the political situation in the country.
“In a current situation, the progress of the country towards the European integration has become more difficult,” the assembly said.
Both sides support the creation of an investigative parliamentary committee. The opposition says that should start with a recount, while the governing Democrats say a recount is excluded.
It very much depends on if the strong stands both sides are showing at this moment are a show of force, or a tool of democracy which they may change or soften later.
For the moment everyone knows that the 140-seat parliament has the capacity to pass many laws, including electing the new president, which asks for absolute majority (50 percent plus one). But it cannot pass many other laws that require three-fifth or 84 votes.
The Democrats control 75 of parliament’s 140 seats; the Socialists have 65.
These laws are the ones which may be needed along the country’s path toward EU integration, the ones that may be needed to satisfy Brussels before this summer in order to get the visa-free regime, and more.
Without the opposition lawmakers that cannot be done.
On the other side there is the fear of a heightened political squabbling which may result in deposing the opposition lawmakers of their mandate in early March. They have not been present for six months.
Then what? The majority ‘installs’ new lawmakers and some of whom may accept that, or the opposition then really and strongly pushes the voters, their supporters, to go to the streets.
That is not unlikely in this country. But the situation is a complicated one, even to and for western standards and officials.