TIRANA, June 23 - An activist was killed and a politician wounded in a shootout during a closely contested election in Albania on Sunday that is being watched by Western allies worried about democracy in the NATO country.
The opposition left scents victory, which would deny Prime
Minister Sali Berisha an unprecedented third successive four-year
term since the fall of Albania’s communist rule in 1991.
But the threat of a disputed result is rising, after a political
row left the top electoral body, the Central Election Commission,
short-staffed and unable to certify the result.
The shooting in the northwestern Lac region raised fears of
confrontation in the Adriatic nation, which is deeply polarised
between Berisha’s Democrats and the Socialists of former Tirana Mayor
Edi Rama and has seen election violence before.
Since 1991, Albania has never held an election deemed fully free
and fair, and failure again would further set back its ambitions to
join the European Union.
In Lac, television pictures showed bullet casings scattered across
the street and the smashed rear window of a car. An opposition
activist was killed and an election candidate of the ruling Democrats
was wounded. Police said four guns were fired.
Berisha, a fiery former cardiologist, condemned the violence. “I
voted No. 44 (Democratic Party), I touched fate, a feeling of
pleasure engulfed me, a feeling I have not felt before,” he said
after voting in the capital, Tirana.
Opinion polls are unreliable, but point to a narrow victory for
the Socialists of 48-year-old Rama. He has been buoyed by an alliance
with a small leftist party previously in coalition with Berisha. Rama
lost the last election in 2009, called protesters into the streets
and four were shot dead by security forces.
DISPUTES, DELAYS
Berisha has dominated Albanian political life since the collapse
of its Stalinist rule triggered a breakneck and sometimes violent
transition to capitalism. At 68, defeat on Sunday could spell the end
of his career.
Rama said the Lac shootout was an “effort to frighten people,
to scare citizens away from the ballot boxes”.
“I appeal for people to vote, because a decision that takes
just a few minutes will decide not just the next four years but the
fate of a generation,” he said after voting.
Including Albanian migrant workers abroad, there are 3.27 million
eligible voters. That is more than the official resident population
of 2.8 million people, from Albania’s rugged Alps in the north, down
an Adriatic coastline still undiscovered by Western tourists, to the
Ionian sea off Greece.
Polls close at 7 p.m. (1700 GMT). Official results are due in the
evening, but a system by which party members count the ballots has
repeatedly led to disputes and delays.
Rama pulled his three representatives from the seven-member
Election Commission in April after the coalition government sacked a
member whose party had switched sides to support the Socialists.
The Socialists and Berisha’s Democrats differ little on Albania’s
goal of joining the European Union or its pro-Western policy. But
their confrontational relationship does not sit easy with Brussels or
Albania’s NATO allies.
The EU says the election is a “crucial test” before
Albania can draw closer to the 27-nation bloc, which Croatia will
join in July. Albania applied to join four years ago but has not yet
been made a candidate for membership.
The next government will take on an economy feeling the effects of
the crisis in the euro zone, notably in Greece and Italy where about
1 million Albanians work and send money home. While Albania has
avoided recession, remittances are down and public debt and the
budget deficit are rising.
“I hope and wish the elections will turn out to be very
good,” shopkeeper Teuta Muskaj, a mother of two unemployed law
graduates, said after voting in Tirana. “I expect better for the
future of my children.”
