Economy and employment top poll campaign

TIRANA, May 30 – Bringing back strong economic growth and creating new jobs have become the two main issues in the electoral campaign for the June 23 parliamentary election.
Candidates from all the political parties have pushed their programs in this are in daily meetings they hold with voters nationwide.
Taking care of the economy and of the daily life of the people, including their employment seems to be the attractive tools that the politicians are trying to convince the voters to cast their ballot for them.
The governing Democrats of Prime Minister Sali Berisha want to stick to their flat tax and pledge higher salaries and pensions.
While the main opposition Socialists of Edi Rama say they will change that tax into a progressive one for the personal income, in order to bring more money in the pockets of 95 percent of Albanians. They also harshly denounce what they says is the government’s corruption and monopolies they have created in their eight years of the two terms.
The Socialists are accusing the government of taking the country into a financial crisis, daily increasing the public debt and also the budget deficit.
Rama called the economic crisis an opportunity to find the means for way out. According to him, the majority’s economic model is underperforming; it offers neither energy nor economic and financial stability. He said that the state has been fully dismantled either in terms of integrity and constitutional efficacy or the progress of economy and entrepreneurship. Rama also proposed the formulas outlined in his party’s program for coping with economic crisis and recovery of economy.
Berisha, on his side, says that Rama is getting closer support from the big businessmen and he is fighting for them, not the people.
Both main political parties have pledged to create new jobs in the next four years נ250,000, in the case of the Democrats, and 300,000, according to the Socialists.
Both parties are betting the economy will be the main tool to convince the Albanian voters which way they should cast their ballot, especially voters who have not made up their minds or are politically independent.