Democrats’ Berisha re-named as premier

TIRANA, Sep 9 – Albanian President Bamir Topi on Wednesday nominated re-elected Prime Minister Sali Berisha to the post.
The main opposition Socialist party has boycotted its work, claiming Berisha has rigged the June 28 parliamentary election while Berisha denies allegations of interfering in the vote count.
Berisha’s Democratic Party and allies control 70 seats in the 140-member parliament, while the Socialists and their allies have 66. The leftist LSI, with four seats, has agreed to join Berisha’s coalition which gives them enough seats to support the new government for the next four-year term.
Berisha, 64, and LSI’s Meta have made Albania’s eventual European Union membership a priority.
Berisha has agreed to nominate Meta as his deputy and foreign minister. Two other LSI politicians will run the ministry of economy, trade and energy, and health.
The right-wing Republican leader Fatmir Mediu, stripped of his previous parliamentary immunity and on trial for the last year’s blast of an ammunition disposal factory which killed 26 people and injured 300 others, is to keep the post of the environment minister.
Mediu’s nomination in the post has sparked anger in the country with a group of journalists starting a petition asking Berisha to let the judiciary complete Mediu’s judgment before deciding to have him in the cabinet.
Berisha is expected to send his new cabinet to the president and also present his programme.
Following a presidential decree on the new government there will be a vote in the parliament where Democrats and their allies together with the LSI have 74 seats.
International monitors, whose final report is expected later this month, have already cited irregularities.
Albania, which joined NATO this year and is seeking EU membership, wants to improve its election record, which in the past has been marred by violence and irregularities.