Albanians vote in a test of political maturity

TIRANA, Feb. 15 – On Sunday, about 2.9 million registered voters in the country of 4.2 million registered citizens will elect officials to local office in some 380 urban and rural communities. Sunday’s local elections are considered a test of the political support for the governing Democratic Party-led coalition’s capabilities to run the country and a personal challenge to the opposition Socialist Party’s leader, who is also Tirana’s mayor. In the 2003 local elections the Socialists won about two-third of the local government posts. The Socialists also have been governing the Tirana city hall since 2000.
“With your vote we took the criminals to the law. With your vote we applied the ‘clean hands’ policy and escaped from abuse, smuggling and fiscal evasion,” Democrat Prime Minister Berisha told his supporters in the southern town of Berat. Many analysts believe that Sunday’s polls are more a personal test for the Socialist leader Edi Rama who needs to definitely regain his post of Tirana mayor. “A Rama victory would consolidate his post as the party’s leader while a Democrats’ win would solidly strengthen their position of being in power,” according to Albert Rakipi of the Albanian Institute of International Studies, an independent non-governmental organization.
The electoral race has been politicized because the battle has concentrated in Tirana where the opposition Socialist leader Edi Rama runs for the third time, this time for a four-year mandate, against former Democratic Party’s Interior Minister Sokol Olldashi. “Tirana does not deserve a corrupted governing,” claims Olldashi, while Rama says that Olldashi is not adept and does not know Tirana’s problems. There is practically not much difference in the programs presented by each of them. Both criticize the other for not being aware of the capital’s problems, or for abusing the post, and then offering programs that would really turn the capital into a western city. Much is normally forgotten or cannot be made due to the lack of the will, finance or capacities during the term. The entire electoral campaign in the country has been eclipsed from the competition in the capital which will also serve as the basis for the next presidential contest later this year. Opposition has made it clear they will press again in presidential elections to go to early general elections, considering that Berisha does not have two-thirds of the parliament, or 83 votes, to elect the president.
Rama’s contest will be considered a proof of his capabilities not only to run the capital’s governing but also the party’s leadership which he is has held for 15 months after former leader and premier Fatos Nano resigned following the defeat in general elections in July 2005. Rama should convince voters how he can survive Tirana management with a Democratic Party-led government which may reduce funding for the city hall, quite different from 2004 when with his Socialist Party in the central governing, he was voted in an Internet contest the world’s best mayor for his work in improving living conditions in the Albanian capital. “These elections are a political test for both main parties, which have created the biggest alliances in post-communist Albania,” according to Lutfi Dervishi.
Olldashi “comes with clean hands and letters, documents,” say his colleagues, to confront a corrupted mayor. Olldashi left his ministerial and parliamentarian posts trying to convince Tirana citizens what he would improve upon Rama’s mandate with more green areas, schools and kindergarten. He is confident he has enough financial support from the central government though often seeming like a not well-based or studied initiatives.
The Sunday’s polls were postponed from their first date of Jan. 20 and threatened not to be held after more than a year-long political confrontation between the two groupings. The international community had to directly get involved in mediation between them so that they could complete a deal Jan. 13 on electoral reforms, clearing the way for local elections. The deal, which put an end to a dispute of more than one year between the 12 parties of the governing coalition of Prime Minister Sali Berisha and the Socialist-led opposition of Tirana Mayor Edi Rama, was reached with the direct involvement of the Organization for Security and cooperation in Europe, Council of Europe, European Union and NATO. The OSCE’s Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has sent the first group of 22 international observers, out of a total of 430 monitors who are to monitor the electoral process. There will also be some 4,000 local observers as well.
Unless Sunday’s elections go along normally they will be a significant setback for the country’s entrance into the international arena, for its integration efforts into NATO and the European Union. “They are hopefull that Albania will close the post-communist chapter of contested elections,” said Dervishi. Since communism ended in Albania in 1990, its elections have consistently fallen short of international standards. The international community has always intervened to mediate between the two ever-squabbling political sides. The international community repeatedly told Albanian politicians their long running political disputes would harm the country’s aims of eventual integration into the European Union and NATO.
The electoral campaign has been very intensive especially in Tirana. Saturday is a day off from the campaign leaving the case for voters to decide on Sunday.