Elections Saga Over, Democrats Win

TIRANA, July 27 – A month after the June 28 parliamentary elections the Central Elections Commission on Monday declared all the seats after ending the calculations of the votes.
Albanian election authorities on Monday declared the governing Democratic Party-led coalition of Prime Minister Sali Berisha as winner of the June 28 parliamentary elections.
Albania’s leading administrative body Central Elections Commission (CEC) waited for the solution of the complaints from political parties before making the final allocation of the 140 seats of the parliament.
An Electoral College gave its verdicts for more than 30 complaints from political parties.
The announcement of the final results of the June 28 vote was stretched by a lengthy recount, prompted by opposition allegations that the elections were rigged to ensure victory for the ruling coalition. However, the Democrats have denied any wrongdoing.
Berisha’s Democrats won 68 seats, also supported with one from the Republican Party and another from the Democracy and Integration Party.
Opposition Socialists of Tirana Mayor Edi Rama got 65 seats, plus another from the Human Rights Union Party.
The smaller leftist SMI Party won four seats.
Berisha’s Democrats and the SMI promised to form a coalition and to advance Albania’s goal of European Union membership a priority.
The newly formed alliance, the four-party coalition, consisting of the Democrats, Republican Party, the Party of Democratic Integration and Socialist Movement for Integration, now has secured 74 seats in the new parliament.
Berisha’s alliance has won enough seats to form a government, though it fell one seat short of a majority. The result means Berisha’s centre-right alliance will be forced to govern with a small left-wing party.
It is the first time since the start of multi-party democracy in 1991 that a ruling party has been forced into a coalition through not winning enough seats on its own.
Political parties may complain on the calculation of the vote, according to CEC spokesman Leonard Olli. Final results are formally to be publicized Saturday.
The opposition Socialists have complained of manipulation accusing the governing party of interfering with a recount in an effort to win more seats in parliament and have threatened not to recognize election results.
An international monitoring mission, which sent some 500 observers, is to give its evaluation report within eight weeks after the formal final results.
In their preliminary evaluations they criticized political interference on delaying the vote count, noted procedural problems and criticized the CEC of insufficient guidance of lower level administration and inconsistent handling of complaints.
In their first reaction after the June 28 election, the observers reported some improvement but cited a need for further progress to comply with international standards including an end to widespread family voting and the polarized political climate.
Albania’s election process is considered an important test for the tiny Balkan country’s progress of democracy. Criticism of the latest poll could mean the country’s EU aspirations remain a distant dream. On April 28, Albania applied for EU candidate status. The European Commission is expected to review the application this autumn.
The election dispute comes as Albania is seeking to improve its election standards and to gain eventual EU membership. Albania, which joined NATO in April, has been under intense international pressure to ensure the seventh post-communist vote was free of the kind of fraud that marred the first six elections held after the Balkan country’s communist regime fell in 1990.