New parliament convenes September 7th

TIRANA, Aug 31 – Albania’s President Bamir Topi decreed September 7th as the day the new parliament would convene.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party and its allies won 70 seats of the 140-seat parliament in the June 28 parliamentary poll. The LSI, a small leftist party that won four seats, has agreed to join the next government.
Berisha is expected to present the new cabinet during the first session, to start next week, Monday, Sept. 7th, at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT).
The opposition Socialists won 66 seats together with a small ally and have complained of vote manipulation. It is not clear whether the Socialists will take part or boycott the session. At their recent party convention the Socialists said they did not recognize the results politically but it was unclear what that meant in practice.
International monitors are due to issue a final report next month. In preliminary reports they have criticized political interference in the vote count and other technical shortcomings.
Fifty percent of Albania’s 3.1 million registered voters cast ballots in the election – 1 percent above the number which turned out for the previous parliamentary poll in 2005.
Following a calm voting day Sunday, June 28 the political friction started with the counting, which was delayed for many days, resulting in many complaints that had to be decided from an electoral college as the last legal stage.
Despite that, the opposition complains of voting irregularities.
Meanwhile the opposition Socialists are involved in an internal fight following the loss at the June 28 parliamentary poll where they won 66 seats. Berisha’s Democrats won 70 and Meta’s SMI four.
While Berisha holds the upper hand, he still must pacify the 16 allies of his coalition as well as Meta’s grouping, all demanding posts in the new cabinet.
That political fight may also have its negative consequences at this moment.
Albania is expecting the final evaluation of the June 28 election from the OSCE/ODIHR monitoring mission next month. Another evaluation, which will probably hold similar news, will come from the Council of Europe at the end of September as well. All those reports come out just before the EU brings out its annual report on Albania.
Albania has applied for candidate status and Brussels has said it will consider that application later this autumn.
At the same time the Democrats and Berisha have promised that the country will enjoy a visa free regime during the first year of their second mandate. Brussels is to reconsider Albania’s fulfillment of the roadmap it had asked for next summer. Albania needs to work harder to issue biometric passports and better manage its borders.
All these steps may require a political consensus to pass laws linked to them. That means that there must be at least three-fifths of parliament’s votes, 83, which can only be done with the assistance of the opposition Socialists.
Will the Socialists be ready to down play their political ambitions for the sake of the country’s integration and thus give their votes to Berisha? Or will their anger be strong enough to tell Brussels that Berisha’s government and coalition is a corrupted one, unable to take the country ahead and it would be wrong for Brussels to support that cabinet?
Hard to say at this moment and Albanians, even if they are politically affiliated with one side or another, still think for themselves: what is the right path?
One may say the right path is that the country should make the required steps/reforms and get integrated into the European Union as fast as possible and that it does not matter which of the political coalitions is correct, which is wrong, what is their interpretation of the right path and so on.
People want to get integrated into Europe and political corruption or lack of maturity is not in their interest.