Delay Could Be Strategy In Itself

Since last summer’s elections, most of Albania’s key political players have been biting their time to achieve their goals, resulting in the continual postponement of achieving any solution that would lead to a fully functioning parliament. Now, with the closing of parliament until September for the summer recess, a solution to the political upheaval has been delayed once again. This is part of the larger trend of reasoning among Albania’s current political elite נthat patience brings victory, and he who blinks first is likely to lose the battle. It also politically benefits the leaders of the two largest political parties.
Albania’s parliament, like much of the country, has now gone on vacation from a parliamentary session that ended in much the same ugly way it started. It started with half the parliament missing due to opposition boycott, and it ended with the opposition in presence but punches been thrown in front of television cameras.
But more importantly than the fight, the parliament ended its session with no solution to Albania’s political crisis, which has been postponed with a pile of unapproved laws until September. Both parties are biting their time. By not bowing to pressure to reach a deal, they keep postponing a solution – and the delay benefits both sides.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha is the biggest winner out of the situation, as he keeps ruling with a solid majority as long as he keeps his junior coalition partners in the Socialist Movement for Integration happy. As the liberalization of the visa regime approaches, the Democrats hope to ride the wave of popularity until the next elections. Despite the liberalization decision being way overdue, the ruling politicians will milk it for all its worth, and they will be partly successful in doing so.
On the Socialist Party side, Tirana Mayor Edi Rama’s claim of electoral fraud is partly what has allowed him to stay at the helm of his party. So he too is not interested in a political compromise which would not only see him accept the electoral loss – despite the fact that whether he did lose fair and square is still up for dispute נbut could see him overthrown by fractions in his own party.
Biting the time is beneficial, so much so that politicians are now coming up with diversionary tactics like the artificial conflict between the ruling Democratic Party and President Bamir Topi.
Democratic lawmakers accuse Topi of having failed his constitutional duties because he has failed to meet a deadline to nominate the head of the constitutional court on time. This comes after the same lawmakers repeatedly refused Topi’s nominations to the court because though perfect legal experts they did not meet the political measurements set forth by the Democratic Party.
The irony is that Topi himself came out of the Democratic Party ranks. He was Berisha’s deputy and potential long-term rival for leadership when given the important-sounding but powerless job of the country’s president. As was the case with the former president, Alfred Moisiu, if you don’t fully succumb to the ruling party’s requests, as a weak president in a parliamentary republic you become a target of attacks.
As with Moisiu, there are voices in the Democratic Party calling for Topi’s impeachment, an improbable event, since that would require the votes of the opposition and SMI, which has come out in support of the president, indicating a public rift with their coalition partners, the Democrats.
But biting the time could also lead to a new normal, as it largely has over the last few months. In this new normal, important institutions like the parliament barely function with the opposition minimal presence, while the country is left in limo. By waiting, postponing and creating real and artificial conflicts, the politicians come out as winners, while the country and its people suffer.