Is the opposition returning to parliament?

TIRANA TIMES EDITORIAL
Albania is headed toward an unlikely political crisis — one that could potentially leave parliament without any official opposition — as MPs from the Democratic Party risk losing their seats soon under the country’s laws, due to their prolonged absence from parliament.
The opposition’s prolonged boycott of parliament has led to repeated calls by domestic and international actors for it to resume active parliamentary life and for the ruling majority to respect the opposition’s role.
This week, for example, German Ambassador Hellmut Hoffmann made a clear call on the Democrats to end their boycott.
“It’s important to be clear on certain things. The opposition should take place in parliament,” Hoffmann said.
The main opposition Democratic Party has been boycotting parliament since July, serving an array of reasons and conditions to be met by the ruling majority. None of these rise to the deal-breakers that in a proper democracy would lead to a parliamentary boycott.
Either the Democrats are failing to properly communicate their concerns or they are trying to create artificial political conflict. Ultimately it is in their best interest — and that of the country — to end the boycott sooner rather than later.
The leader of the Democrats in parliament, Edi Paloka, said in a television interview this week that the party is prepared to take the boycott to the end, meaning losing the MP seats, and did not appear to budge to growing pressure on the Democrats to take their seats in parliament.
The party has served a series of reasons, including the fact that one of their lawmakers, Gent Strazimiri, was physically attacked by two Socialist counterparts. They now to face charges in the attack caught on camera, and parliament has opened the way to a proper investigation on the matter.
The opposition also requested several other concrete steps, such as the creation of certain special investigative commissions in parliament as well as the right of immediate reply to prime minister’s comments by the opposition, conditions which were met by the ruling majority.
The Democrats now want an internationally-guaranteed agreement with the ruling majority that the opposition’s voice will be respected in parliament and that the government will follow rulings of the Constitutional Court on a timely basis.
This is 2014, and seeking internationally-guaranteed agreements is something that should be in Albania’s past. That type of effort and the trend of opposition boycott in every parliament Albania has elected since the fall of communism must end.
Albanian oppositions in general — not just the current one — have always used the boycott to easily, and it has always been harmful to the country. This newspaper has also called for the Socialists to end their boycotts when they refused to go to parliament several years ago.
However, one cannot help but notice that the bar for boycott this time has been set pretty low. The opposition likes to rely on street rallies to show it is gaining support. That’s fine, but they were also elected by the Albanian people to challenge the government in parliament and offer alternatives in parliament — not in parallel meetings and press conferences.
At the end of the day, the Democrats lost the election in a landslide. Of course that does not give the political majority the right to completely disregard the rules and walk over the opposition. However, in a democracy, majority rules. And as such, boycotting parliament simply because you don’t want to accept that you clearly lost the election, is no way to run a modern democratic opposition.