Elections in the region and Albania

TIRANA, May 8 – Neighboring Greece held parliamentary elections, polls were also held in Serbia, also a country in this region. The votes there, their results will normally affect Albania directly, its immigrants living there, or our brethren in Kosovo and in southern Serbia that concern Tirana too.
Greece achieved no clear results on who is to run the country. Both main political parties are not capable of creating the government. The center-right New Democracy withdrew from creating a government. But the opposition Socialists should wait till the leftists of another party, which came second, makes its efforts first. And if they both fail, then it is up to rightist extremist who have openly said they will kick immigrants out of Greece.
There are officially some 600,000 Albanians living in Greece, though unofficial figures may take that figure to one million. Greece is in a very bad economic situation and the polls further deepened it into an abyss.
Calls from the new fascists political party, which is the fourth winning party in the last polls in Greece should be also an issue of great concern for Tirana. For sure all Albanians felt something bad when following the ‘heroic’ march of that Greek leader after the polls. But unfortunately he may be also one that may try to create a government there. Sure no one from the other political groupings would support that extremist trend. But the fact that some percentage of the Greeks cast their ballots for that party speaks in itself.
Tirana rushed first to hail New Democracy victory but that was hasty. Albania is obliged to keep good ties with whoever is in power in that country, due to the big number of immigrants there. But the future is not clear.
Election in Serbia had also some ‘reflections’ in Albania too.
The two running presidential candidates have not been friendly to Tirana and above all to Kosovo.
Tirana has tried to keep diplomatic balance and did not speak out loud to say that it is not good that Serbia is trying to hold elections in Kosovo too, which it has never said or considered as a separate country.
But besides all these Belgrade showed its anger or gave a strong signal it is hardly resigning of Kosovo. Eight Albanians were arrested in Presheva valley.
It was then that Tirana reacted. Prime Minister Sali Berisha reacted against the arrestment and maltreatment in the Presheva valley. He also called on all the Albanians in the three communes to take part massively in the elections of their representatives and with their votes to penalize the acts of violence committed by Beograd authority. Unfortunately they could not elect any of their candidates, as the preliminary results showed.
President Bamir Topi also condemned the arrests as “scenarios of the Serb ultra-nationalists to create terror and fear among the Albanian population” there. “Such premeditated acts which violate the democratic standards Šaim at destabilizing peace and security of the people in our region,” he said.
Under such developments Albania should not only play its role in the region, show its strength and moderate policy, but it should also try to cope with the economic and financial crisis in Europe and in the region.
Until now Albania has kept well, remaining the only European country besides Poland that managed to avoid a recession in 2009. The fallout from the euro area crisis is set to take a temporary toll on the economy, but growth will pick up again in the medium term, even though the strong pre-crisis performance (average real GDP growth around 6% from 2000-07) might be rather out of reach, according to a study from the German Bank.
Albania’s long-term perspective of deepened EU integration supports economic and political progress and a major success has been the liberalization of visa requirements for Albanians travelling to the Schengen area since end-2010.
Albania’s trade and financial links, in particular to Italy and Greece, and its dependence on the inflow of remittances make the economy vulnerable to developments in the euro area.
Keeping its budget deficit under 60 percent is the main goal and challenge. Until now it has reached 58.7 percent, according to the finance ministry.
The government is trying hard to attract more FDI inflows in order to moderate somewhat against the slowdown in the euro area. Albania’s public debt is quite large and at the highest level in the region.
And despite all these there is the fear that the political climate can be deteriorated again ahead of parliamentary elections in Mar 2013. That could be the biggest challenge which the country should consider, even more than its role in the region. Though that should never be left aside or forgotten.