Albania’s ruling Socialists and the main opposition Democratic Party of intimidating voters and officials during Sunday’s parliamentary elections. OSCE Ambassador to Albania Pavel Vacek told BosNewsLife the election was marred by serious irregularities and violence in which at least one election official and another man was killed.
Voting has been closely followed by Christians in the region, amid concern about new religious legislation which they claim is potentially damaging to smaller Christian denominations such as Baptists in the country.
Under the Socialist-led government, which includes former Communists, plans were drafted to limit "extremist" groups, but it was unclear which churches or organizations were meant. Any change in leadership was expected to impact Christians, Baptist missionaries said in statements monitored by BosNewsLife News Center.
HIGH LEVEL VIOLENCE
OSCE official Vacek, told BosNewsLife Sunday’s ballot went off without the high level of violence that had marred previous elections, but claimed he was disappointed that 15 years after the collapse of Communism, Albania is still unable to hold elections that fulfill all democratic standards.
"One can speak of a certain progress, but certainly we have not seen a complete departure of the malpractices of the past. A number of irregularities were reported on polling day," Vacek added. "And most importantly, the polling day has been marred by one tragedy, a murder of an election observer for the Republican Party. That in itself is very regrettable."
Police said the election official was shot and killed outside a voting station in Tirana, but it is unclear if political motives were behind the murder. Vacek blames extremists of the main Socialist and Democratic parties for the violence.
MILITANT CONFRONTATIONS
"We are talking about confrontations of militants sometimes even armed militants of the respective parties," he said. "What is a fact of life in Albania is that there are probably still hundreds of thousands of [fire] arms, [such as] hand guns illegally held by the population."
Many of those weapons were taken from the army during riots that followed failed pyramid schemes which left many people bankrupt. It also lead to the initial withdrawal of several mission organizations because of security concerns, but many have know returned, hoping that more security and a new political climate will make it easier to operate in the Balkan nation.
But Ambassador Vacek said suggested that Albania was still not mature enough to hold elections as numerous polling stations "opened late on Sunday," while "there were technical problems" at other stations.
EU WARNING
The European Union had made it clear to the Albanian government that it would consider the election as a test of the Balkan country’s readiness to sign an association agreement that would put Albania on track to join the EU.
Early returns showed Tuesday, July 5, that the leader of the opposition Democratic Party Sali Berisha had a slight lead over the ruling Socialists.
Whoever wins will face a difficult task of raising the country’s standard of living. Despite some improvement in the economy, one out of four Albanians lives in poverty. (With BosNewsLife Research, Voice Of America (VOA) and reports from Albania).
