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Edi Rama, Socialists heading for victory in Albania election

27 June 2013 02:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. After 99 percent of the votes were counted by Albania's Central Election Commission (CEC) on Wednesday, three days after the general elections in Albania, the left-wing Alliance of the European Albania is well ahead of the Democratic Party-led right-wing Alliance for Employment, Welfare and Integration, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Preliminary calculations from local analysts show that the Socialist Party-led coalition has won the majority of votes in most regions of the country. It is projected to secure 84 compared to 55 parliamentary seats of the right-wing coalition.

If confirmed, the result would end eight years of rule by Sali Berisha and bring to power 48-year-old Edi Rama, an artist who won international acclaim as a mayor for revitalizing Albanian capital Tirana with splashes of paint and avenues of trees.

Rama urged Berisha, Albania's dominant political figure since 1991, to step aside.

"There always comes a time to lose, and today is the time to do it for the honor of Albania," he said.

A former cardiologist, Berisha brought Albania to NATO in 2009 and onto the road to eventual EU membership. But his opponents accuse him of undermining democracy and allowing graft and organized crime to flourish.

Before his initial election to the post, Berisha served as Albania's president from 1992-97, and was elected to a second term before the government collapsed a few months after the election in the chaos caused by the collapse of pyramid investment schemes in which many Albanians lost their life savings.

So far, Berisha has not made any statements about the vote count, despite increasing pressure from Rama to acknowledge the defeat.

Both Albania's Democrats and Socialists are in favor of the country's political integration into Europe, and of strengthening ties across the Atlantic.

The EU has rejected Albania's application for EU membership candidacy three times in the past four years. One of the reasons for this was that, since two decades ago, the country had never managed to hold an election that met international standards of fairness and transparency. Brussels had warned that this election would be seen as a test of Albania's democratic maturity.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule issued a joint statement on Tuesday underlining that the elections took place in an overall orderly manner and that they were waiting for the conclusions of the International Election Observation Mission.

Ashton and Fule condemned the reported cases of violence, adding they expected these incidents would be fully investigated and perpetrators brought to justice.

Despite a shooting in Lac which left one opposition supporter dead, one Democrat candidate wounded, international monitors noted overall improvements in Albania's election -- seen as key test for the country's hopes for closer ties with the EU.

Nonetheless, political feuding could potentially prevent the CEC from certifying the winners in the election. A dispute of CEC could complicate the final stages of the vote count.

Three of the commission's seven members pulled out of the body in April after a dispute over replacement of a commission member. The result itself could be thrown into doubt because the CEC, which legally must have at least five members to certify the election results, currently only has four.