Opposition leadership election

TIRANA, Sep 22 – This Saturday it will be officially known whether Edi Rama will stay at the head of the main opposition Socialist Party or he will be replaced by Maqo Lakrori, the other candidate for the party’s top post.
Socialists have been involved in the election process of the party’s leader since their convention of the end of August.
Based on the statute the party’s leader is suspended from the post if they lose in the parliamentary elections. That means that Rama is formally suspended though he is practically running the grouping every day.
Rama and his rival for the post Maqo Lakrori have been running all around the country presenting their ideas why they want to run the party for the next four years.
It is generally believed that Rama will continue to keep the party’s post. He has been running it in the last four years, electing many of the local leaders and thus enjoying the required majority of the votes.
Lakrori, once a former minister and also senior party leader does not have that personality to cope with Rama.
The party is practically being managed by Rama and its policy also follows what he desires. The party has boycotted the parliament asking for an investigative commission to check the doubtful ballots in a series of ballot boxes claimed by them.
That has been Rama’s policy after he learnt that he could not become the new prime minister.
Socialists won 65 votes and their smaller ally Human Rights Union Party one. Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democrats won 68 votes and their allies _ Republican and Justice and Integration parties _ one each taking their number to 70 as they were in one coalition. The other four votes were won by the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) of Ilir Meta who agreed for a coalition and is now part of Berisha’s cabinet.
Besides vote ‘deformation’ Rama is blaming the smaller ally, the LSI, for joining ranks with Berisha whom Meta and his party had previously targeted as their ‘enemy’ to take the throne.
So Rama is running more for his personal position in the party. Rama did not agree to be a new lawmaker with the party but remained as Tirana mayor. That post is also going to be very difficult to be preserved at the local elections in two years, not to say earlier as Democrats and the LSI may try to take him out of that post too with their numbers at the Tirana city council.
Rama will formally have the party’s post on Saturday and that means for the next four years whether he wins (if he will run) or loses at the local elections of 2011.
But the ‘new’ party leader will again have to fight to keep that post.
Five lawmakers have already come out as his opponents in the party claiming they should go back to parliament and also asking Rama to bear a large part of the blame for the loss at the June 28 elections.