Tirana Times
TIRANA, May 13 – It has been a busy week in Albania’s ongoing political crisis. Here is a look at the latest development.
Socialists start nationwide road blocking
Albania’s Socialist Party supporters temporarily blocked national roads in nine cities in support of the request for transparency of last year’s election allegedly rigged by Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party.
In capital Tirana police used physical violence to disperse protesters, gathered at 1 p.m. in nine cities in solidarity with the hunger strike of 21 lawmakers and 180 supporters camped beneath Berisha’s office.
After 11 days more than two dozen strikers have been hospitalized.
The opposition’s call for a partial recount of votes cast in general elections in June has been rejected by Berisha. Another big rally has been planned for Friday.
Socialists’ mission impossible
Astrit Patozi, deputy Democratic Party leader and head of its parliamentary group, said that Socialists’ requests made a day earlier were a “mission impossible.”
Patozi said that the way was open for the Socialists to lead a parliamentary investigative commission and one in charge of reforms in the electoral code, based on the recommendations of the OSCE/ODIHR report after the June 28 elections. He said they would be ready for any amendment needed for that and compiled from the opposition.
He also offered that their claims were considered from the Constitutional Court or the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, or the OSCE/ODIHR.
But he harshly denounced the hunger strike calling it a personal political pretext for the opposition leader Edi Rama.
“All this rhetoric and the hunger strike have nothing to do with the transparency (of the vote) but they are part of the personal political agenda for Mr. Rama,” he said.
“He is asking with radical tools to achieve what he couldn’t with the free and fair elections. This is a mission impossible,” he said.
The Socialists have refused to attend parliament over the issue, resuming the boycott last week after they had stopped it this February. The hunger strike marks an escalation of protests.
In search of a solution, Topi intensifies meetings with foreign officials
President Bamir Topi resumed his meetings with ambassadors from Albania’s Western allies in an effort to find a way out for the political crisis that has gripped the country.
On Tuesday he met with U.S. Ambassador John Withers and Spanish Ambassador Manuel Montobbio, whose country holds the EU rotating presidency.
“The meeting discussed the recent political situation in the country, the possibility of constitutional and institutional ways to solve and normalize the political situation in the country as soon as possible,” said a statement from the presidential office.
A day earlier Topi expressed frustration with the inability of the opposition and majority to find a compromise to the current stalemate over the results of the parliamentary elections.
“I have made and continue to make attempts, but we do not yet have institutional dialogue about the current political situation,” Topi told reporters. “There is a need for political will to end this situation because the president has no legal means to force the parties involved to reach a solution.”
Today’s meeting follows that of last Friday, then the Topi also met with Foreign Minister Ilir Meta to discuss the political crisis that has gripped the country.
Berisha and Rama have been locked in a stalemate over the results of the June 28, 2009 parliamentary elections, which Berisha’s party narrowly won.
More than 120 intellectuals call for stop of hunger strike
Some 126 intellectuals in the country made a call with a letter they signed to Rama asking him to give an end to the hunger strike and not hamper the country’s progress toward integration into the European union.
“Mr. Rama, take off the obstacle. Let Albanians arrive at their home, in Europe. The fight for power cannot be an obstacle to integration,” wrote the letter which was signed by many artists, writers, actors and important people in other spheres of life.
Media rights organization denounces Socialists’ ban on public television coverage
Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday protested against a ban slapped by the leadership of the opposition Socialist Party preventing Albania’s public radio and television (RTSH) from covering a hunger strike by some of its deputies against alleged vote fraud on Deshmoret e Kombit boulevard.
A team from RTSH went to the scene of the hunger strike on May 4 but were ordered to leave the spot for “their own safety” by party spokesman Armela Imeraj. When the journalists refused to leave and continued to work, party bodyguards intervened and bundled them away.
Their protest to the party leader went unheeded.
“The attitude of the Socialist Party is both surprising and unacceptable. The action to raise awareness that it launched a few days ago is taking place in the street, in other words in a public place. Nothing can justify such restrictions on media coverage of an event like this, for both public and privately run media”, Reporters Without Borders said.
“If, as the organizers say, this is a peaceful protest action, there is no reason for militants to attack the media, even if they do not like them. If the independence of RTSH can legitimately be questioned, that does not in any way justify preventing them for working freely on the streets of the capital. One cannot quite rightly condemn abuse of authority by the Albanian government in the public media or towards the private media and use the same methods of censorship,” the organization said.
“We call on the organizers of this demonstration to publicly undertake to guarantee free access to all media. Police who are responsible for covering the event should be able to provide sufficient protection to the press if it turns out to be necessary,” it concluded.
Feuding political class needs to show maturity, says EU
European Union representatives urged Albanian politicians to show “maturity” on Tuesday, as the country’s opposition continued to boycott parliament and staged a hunger strike to demand a partial recount of last June’s elections.
The opposition protest and their hunger strike has paralyzed political activity, preventing the government from adopting the required reforms for EU accession.
But European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fuele refused to be drawn into the conflict.
“I will not play a role of intermediary … it is for the political establishment of Albania to show the maturity,” he said at the end of an EU-Albania meeting in Brussels.
Albania’s Foreign Minister, Ilir Meta, struck a conciliatory note, calling the opposition’s protest “extreme” but “democratic” and claiming there was “sufficient space for finding a compromise.”
Tirana’s leaders submitted an application for EU membership in April 2009, but have not made much progress since then.
The EU has repeatedly signaled that unless the parliamentary row is resolved, that situation was likely to continue.
It “called on the Albanian political leaders to take into account the possible consequences of the political deadlock for Albania’s EU integration path.”
The political stalemate, however, was not expected to stand in the way of the EU’s decision to scrap visas for Albanian citizens, expected before the end of the year.
“We have seen that Albania is on track to achieve this (visa) liberalization in the near future,” said Spain’s minister for EU affairs Diego Lopez Garrido, whose country currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency.
