Agree To (Dis)agree?!

Tomorrow, after almost six months of clashes and disputes on the last parliamentary elections, premier Berisha and head of Socialists Rama, under the patronage of the President of the Republic, will sit down to try and bring the political deadlock to an end. The Socialist Party has maintained a months-long boycott of parliament accusing of manipulation of the election results that gave the centre-right Democratic Party a second mandate in power through striking an alliance with the Socialist Movement for Integration, a left-wing party. The boycott of parliament based on controversial accusations on the conduct of elections has brought back to Albania the kind of fierce political conflict laden with hate-speech and personal attacks that has characterized Albania’s transition these past twenty years. The boycott has been a great detriment to the parliament’s functioning and the surrounding political conflict has had grave implications, reaching local-level governance too.
Developments in Albania during the past six months have accentuated the problematic state of democracy in the country, the low degree of the functioning of democracy and of political maturity. We had hoped that with these last general elections we would have broken away from a political legacy dominated by conflict, disagreements, lack of consensus and dependency from the international community. Unfortunately though, the above phenomena seem to have regenerated themselves to the letter.
In fact, just like in previous acute political disputes, this time also the government and the opposition are sitting down for talks under the counsel and pressure of the international community. A resolution of the European Parliament as well as the almost daily pressures of the heads of international diplomatic missions to Tirana are again the decisive factors forcing government and opposition to sit down for talks. This role of the international community is only the first failure of the current conflict. With the majority and the opposition brought to sit down for talks, the question of whether an agreement that will put an end to the political status quo in Albania will be actually achieved remains.
Despite the fact that the leader of the opposition and the prime minister are heading for talks under the encouragement and pressure of international actors, it is still important and positive that the parties to the conflict have agreed to talk. That they have agreed to agree, however, does not necessarily mean that the crisis is over. Local experts of the Institute for International Studies hold low expectations of the talks that will begin tomorrow, especially as the parties are going into talks with extreme and mutually exclusive positions. The head of the Socialist Party Rama declared the opening of ballot boxes to be a nonnegotiable condition for the Socialist MPs’ return to parliament. Government, on the other hand, has long expressed itself willing to support a comprehensive investigation of the elections providing that the court decisions on election results are respected. Premier Berisha has repeatedly declared that under no circumstance will the government sanction the opening of ballot boxes.
Low expectations of these talks rest on the fact that the head of the Socialists and the head of the Democrats are not entering talks due to the realization of the futility and unacceptability of preserving the status quo, but because talks are being imposed by international actors. After constant international pressure, the two leaders seem to have been left with no other choice. Hope of breaking this truly futile and unacceptable deadlock rests only on the fact that failure of the talks encouraged by the international community and lead by the head of state would worsen the situation further, and would erode the role of the president.