Two years after voting it into national power, the Albanian people have handed the Socialist-led coalition another massive vote of confidence by giving it mayoral election victories in 45 out of 61 municipalities, including in Tirana and other large cities.
With that vote of support comes major responsibility for the Socialist Party and its chief ally, the Socialist Movement for Integration. It is now more important than ever that they act with humility and balance and do not allow the effervescence of victory to make them forget that they are there to serve the voters – not themselves.
In a democracy, when the people have clearly spoken, one has to obey their verdict. And the losing political parties and candidates have largely been graceful in their defeat, although they do have some legitimate concerns about some aspects of the electoral process.
The Democratic Party, based on the vote, has yet to redeem itself for the mistakes of eight years in power. It ran a political national campaign asking for a referendum against what is sees as bad governance over the past two years by the Socialists and their allies. The voters disagreed with its view. The party must now analyze the situation and work hard to regain the voters’ trust. Albania needs a strong opposition – now more than ever.
When a governing force gets such a strong winning percentage, its primarily concern is to look and eliminate things that can potentially hurt its ruling legitimacy.
One test of legitimacy is the voter turnout. Albanians have a history of high voter turnouts. These elections were marked by an official turnout of about 48 percent. However the percentage of resident voters is likely higher, as a third of Albania’s population lives and works abroad, and the vast majority did not vote, unless they traveled to their hometowns to do so. Some estimates placed the turnout of the resident population at about 70 percent.
The other test of legitimacy are irregularities in the process. International observers did express concerns about “vote buying, allegations of pressure on voters, politicized electoral institutions and other irregularities.”
These features have been a regular part of Albanian democracy over the previous decade, and we will yield to prosecutors investigating these cases to tell us whether they were less or more pronounced in these latest local elections than before.
We are, however, getting a lot of anecdotal and hearsay evidence – of which we have no solid proof or otherwise we would present it – that many votes were bought and sold – either for something as small as 15 euros slipped into the pocket of an unemployed man or something as large as a solid promise of a job in the public or private sectors.
The election was not kind to independent candidates either. Although getting 16,000 votes, 5.4 percent of total in Tirana, is no easy feat in a political system purposefully designed to crush independents and third-way parties, Gjergj Bojaxhi, the Albanian American economist appealing to educated people fed up with the politics as usual, did not do as well as opinion polls suggested. Other independent candidates performed even worse.
Their lackluster performance shows the political machinery as well as the financial and media backing that comes with the political parties are a must-have to be successful in today’s Albanian political system. It would be healthier for local democracy if things were different. But they are not.
– Andi Balla, aballa@tiranatimes.com
