Patozi-Ruci talks seen as good start, but solution remains elusive

TIRANA, July 14 – The heads of the parliamentary groups of the governing Democratic Party and the main opposition Socialist Party – Astrit Patozi and Gramoz Ruci — met Wednesday to agree on the creation of a new investigative commission on last year’s parliamentary elections.
Their meeting came after the proposal on that made by the European Parliament.
Both said following the talks they had agreed that the new commission would be headed by the opposition, which would also have the majority of its members.
But Patozi made it clear they would not agree with the object of the investigation — partial vote count, as the opposition has insisted.
Thus it is really doubtful if the new commission will be created or not, or if it will have any role or not, if it will be accepted by the opposition or not.
A similar commission was created in March but the opposition did not take part after it declined to include the vote recount as its object of investigation.
The situation is not much different and taking that into consideration one could say there will be another failure.
But we should also consider the European pressure which has made it clear to the Albanian politicians that their deadlock may damage the country’s integration prospects into the bloc.
Albania has applied for the candidate status and the response may come in November together with the annual progress report.
The Belgian Ambassador, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency this second half of the year, made it clear that the solution should be found before November.
There was no date set for the second meeting of the two main political groupings.