Berisha lines up against Topi

TIRANA, March 14 – The fight between President Bamir Topi, who is expected to lead a new political grouping to be founded soon, and Prime Minister Sali Berisha of the governing Democratic party is reaching new heights with both personalities aggravating their language level almost daily.
Tit-for-tat words against each other covered almost all last week.
Topi accused Berisha of having close ties to the old Communist regime, calling on him to explain his political past, to “explain the photographs of him with members of the politburo during the time of the [Communist] dictatorship,” referring to Berisha’s vacations with the son of Albania’s former dictator Enver Hoxha back in the 1980s.
He said that Berisha has been a member of the Communist Party since 1968 “but for the last 22 years has been making up tales about Communism.”
Berisha responded in kind saying that Topi has exploited his post as president to gain property cases and ironically said Topi tried to create the agriculture cooperative, the collective farm during the communist regime, in the center of the capital.
A rift between the president and the prime minister, who were both members of the Democratic Party, has long been present but it has accelerated recently, especially after Topi rejected to sign into a law a 2009 lustration bill, rendered unconstitutional in early 2010 by the country’s Constitutional Court.
Berisha also made some steps with his cabinet trying to show to the former political persecuted and also old property owners they also should remain in his political grouping.
These two groupings seem to be the target of Topi’s new political party, expected to be founded later this month with personalities displeased with the policies and attacks in the Democratic Party.
Berisha is also trying to discredit Topi saying he is part of a branch of the opposition Socialists.
The Socialist Party through its leader Edi Rama has also been involved in this debate showing that the new political groupings expected to come out of the DemocratsנTopi’s and that of the Red-And-Black Alliance of Kreshnik Spahiuנshow that time for the Democrats has passed by and they should leave.
Such a fight is also ahead of the presidential election this summer.
A president is elected first with three-fifth of the votes of the 140-seat parliament in the first two voting and then with a simple majority of 71 votes at the third one.