[ALBSA-Info] Ekonomisti mbi Meten

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Albania’s election

On the road to normality
Jul 14th 2001 | TIRANA
>From The Economist print edition

So its re-elected prime minister hopes


AP
Meta dreams of the EU

ROAD-building is a useful vote-winner, especially in countries struggling to 
shake off poverty. Nowhere more so than in Albania, where pot-holed lanes 
are the rule, a legacy of Stalinist days when private cars were banned. Just 
days before the voters went to the polls on June 24th, in the first of a 
two-round general election, the governing Socialists opened a new four-lane 
highway from Tirana to Durres, the main port and, almost as important, the 
nearest stretch of beach to the capital.

Ilir Meta, the youthful prime minister, pulled off another coup just in time 
for the election. His determined effort to keep Albania out of the ethnic 
conflict in Macedonia was rewarded at the EU’s summit in Gothenburg. Talks 
are to start later this year on a stabilisation and association pact with 
the EU, a sort of beginners’ agreement for Balkan countries (Macedonia and 
Croatia have already signed up) that aspire to be admitted in the next 
intake but one of EU enlargement.

The result, unsurprisingly, was a solid victory for Mr Meta and his 
Socialists; and by the standards of Balkan elections, a fairly clean one. 
After the second round, on July 8th, the Socialists had won 70 out of 140 
seats in parliament. They were also ahead in another four constituencies 
where irregularities had been judged serious enough to warrant a re-run. The 
right-of-centre Democratic Party captured 42 seats, the remainder going to 
four small parties. The Socialists finished with 42% of the vote, to 36% for 
the Democrats.

Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and 
the Council of Europe reported some instances of voter intimidation and 
ballot-box stuffing, but the violence that made past Albanian elections 
dangerous for participants and observers alike was noticeably absent. 
Predictably, Sali Berisha, the mercurial former president who heads the 
Democrats, refused to accept defeat, alleging fraud had been widespread. But 
this time, instead of urging his supporters to demonstrate in the streets of 
Tirana, Mr Berisha said would take his case to the European Court. Indeed, 
on election night, the capital was oddly subdued.

Mr Meta says he wants to team up again with smaller pro-EU parties like the 
Democratic Alliance and the Social Democrats that were part of the 
Socialist-led coalition last time. This would give the Socialists the 84 
parliamentary votes needed to elect a new president next year. Their party 
leader, Fatos Nano, a tough ex-communist, is keen to make a come-back after 
losing the prime minister’s job in a party bust-up. The post carries few 
powers, but he is still hungry for a chance to lord it over Mr Berisha, an 
old rival who sent him to jail in the mid-1990s for political offences.

Some observers fear that a revival of that feud might undermine Albania’s 
still fragile stability; memories of the anarchy that followed the collapse 
of a dozen pyramid finance schemes in 1997 and brought down Mr Berisha are 
only just starting to fade. Yet the Socialists’ second straight election 
win, a rare event in the Balkans, has strengthened Mr Meta and his young, 
pro-EU supporters in the party. They may yet make Albania what West 
Europeans will think of as a normal country.



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