European Forum

Albania's opposition returns to Parliament

The main opposition party in Albania, the Socialist Party (SPA), has announced it will end a six-month Parliamentary boycott today (25 February). The Socialists started their boycott over what they say was fraud in the general elections held on 28 June, which were narrowly won by the centre-right Prime Minister Sali Berisha. Socialist leader and mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, said the return to Parliament will be, however, temporarily.

On 24 February, the Socialist Parliamentary group decided to return to the Parliament. The decision follows intense crisis talks in the last two weeks held under the umbrella of Albanian President Bamir Topi and assisted by a mission of the Council of Europe. “In less than six months our refusal to be part of a façade Parliament that hides an electoral crime has highlighted the crisis of democracy in Albania,” Rama said in a press conference after the meeting.

The Socialists have boycotted the Parliament since the new session began last September, claiming that the government’s alleged fraud was to blame for their electoral loss. Until today they had conditioned their return to Parliament on a recount of the electoral ballots of the Parliamentary vote. Although declaring his openness to a Parliamentary investigation of the election, Berisha has stubbornly rejected the possibility of a recount. He argues that the opposition has exhausted all legal options and that he cannot override the judicial process.
The return to the Parliament of the 64 elected Socialist deputies comes on the threshold of the constitutional limit of absence, which ends next week. If the MPs had continued to be absent past the constitutional limit, they would have been replaced by other party candidates in the electoral lists.

Opposition divided on boycott
Not everyone in the opposition party agreed on the prolonged boycott, and Rama’s critics argue that it produced little for the Socialists.” It’s been five months since I and some other colleagues expected our party to enter Parliament, and we believe we are late,” said Socialist MP Ben Blushi, one of the fiercest critics of Rama’s leadership. Blushi and a handful of other MPs have repeatedly criticised the Parliamentary boycott as ineffective and blamed their party's poll loss on Rama’s poor handling of the electoral campaign.

Temporarily stay
Although the Socialist Parliamentary group will return to Parliament it is not yet clear if it will stay after its 64 MPs take their oath of office. The Socialists are expected to file two bills in Parliament today seeking a recount of the elections ballots. They warn that if Berisha’s Democratic Party does not back them, they will return to the streets to initiate mass demonstrations. “We expect the majority to reflect on our proposals,” Socialist MP Namik Dokle said in a statement. “It’s up to the majority to accept or refuse them,” he added.

Diplomats do nevertheless not expect that the ongoing political stalemate will disappear following the return of the opposition. PM Berisha and Rama are each other rivals and both will likely not give in.

Sources: Balkan Insight; NRC (Dutch)