TIRANA, June 20 – Albania’s third largest party, the Socialist Movement for Integration, has filed a complaint with prosecutors, urging them to investigate Prime Minister Edi Rama over his campaign statement that police officers should help the ruling Socialist Party win in this weekend’s general elections.
The complaint cited a rally on June 16 in Kuà§ova during which Rama called on the police officers to take off their uniform after work and go get more votes to the Socialist Party.
His statement raised eyebrows among many, as police is by law a nonpolitical entity, however. Rama said his statement had been misunderstood, and he apologized if the statement had come out the wrong way.
“It was not my intention at all … but the mistake remains mine,” Prime Minister Rama said, adding he wanted to issue an “apology for the noise created by the call” on police officers.
However, in a letter to the highest authorities in the country and the diplomatic corps, the SMI points out that the statement of the Prime Minister were in violation of the Constitution and key laws and that it might have been a criminal offense to make the statement.
SMI leader Petrit Vasili said the party was pursuing the matter to make all equal under the law, because if a low-level activist had done the same as the prime minister, he or she would have been criminally prosecuted.
Albania’s laws to protect the free and fairness of elections were recently made tougher, including imprisonment to deter vote rigging and the of state resources in the campaign.
The SMI also said it deems it necessary that outgoing President Bujar Nishani call a meeting of the National Security Council to deal with the matter.
The SMI charges against Prime Minister Rama come at a time that tensions between the former allies, SP and SMI, have reached a peak.
In power for eight years with two different partners in government, the SMI is increasingly under attack by the country’s two largest parties, which are trying to squeeze it out and be able able rule alone.
