TIRANA, Aug. 20 – The leadership of the governing Democratic party of Prime Minister Sali Berisha decided Monday to nominate head of the public news agency ATA, Edi Paloka, as a candidate in the partial elections next month to fill the post in parliament left vacant by Bamir Topi after he was elected president in July.
Berisha said they were sure to win the seat and said that the electoral campaign would be professional and Paloka would use it to express his values and those of the government.
Paloka has said zone 31 in Tirana is his residence and the neighborhood where he grew up.
Paloka was nominated as ATA head after the Democratic Party won general elections in 2005 following Paloka losing in another zone in Tirana against opposition rival Shpetim Idrizi.
But Paloka’s nomination is expected to create additional friction within the governing coalition.
Dashamir Shehi of the Movement for National Development, a monarchist grouping of political parties, had already declared his candidacy and was requesting the support from the other political parties of the governing coalition.
They had already started debates with the Republican Party which said openly that the post belonged to the ruling Democratic party which had it before with Topi, now the country’s president.
After Paloka’s nomination Shehi repeated that he would not withdraw from the race.
Berisha, on the other side, said they would try to negotiate with the monarchists. In apparently a move to pacify the monarchists, Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha nominated Prince Leka II, son of the self-declared Albanian King Leka Zogu I, as his close aide.
Nard Ndoka of the Christian Democrats, another ally of the government, and also health minister, criticized the Democrats for not consulting with them on the candidate.
It will be up to some 40,000 voters in Tirana’s zone 31 to decide the winner. The opposition, on their side, have yet to decide who their candidate will be.
