Rama starts preparations for protests

TIRANA, Sep. 9 – Opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama has started to make preparations for the street protests that may resume soon.
That means that the opposition is not expecting any positive result or a compromise from the negotiations with the governing Democratic party of Prime Minister Sali Berisha on the last year’s parliamentary elections.
The Socialists claim vote count manipulation and want a partial recount, which is turned down by the Democrats saying that would violate the laws.
For the moment the two political groupings are still negotiating on creating an investigative parliamentary commission.
But it seems that the Achilles heel in all the talks is the vote recount.
The Socialists say that they should ask the Venice Commission to decide on that, while the Democrats are against the idea that the Constitutional Court in the country is let a limited time of ten days to decide on that. They do not oppose but nor accept the idea of sending a request to the Venice Commission.
Rama has met with mayors of the towns where the Socialists have won and also his close counselors and also the political partners, other smaller political groupings.
They have said before that street protests remain the last option of fighting for the vote transparency and also to topple the Berisha government.
Though they have done that before without success (since after last year’s June elections) this time they likely believe the street protests could oblige the government to bow as the country is expecting visa liberalization and a positive answer on its candidate status request from the European Union.
The European bloc will give an answer for both of them by November and it has become clear that Europe believes a political compromise is one of the fundamental requirements for a democratic country looking for membership.