Yesterday, the European Union and United Stated of America made it clear that these elections would be most important in Albania’s democratic history because fulfillment of international standards would be pivotal in Albanian’s respectively faster or much slower integration into the EU and NATO.

“I hope that everything will go well, even though I am not completely sure” said MEP Doris Pack, “because these elections are very important for Albania. All citizens should go out to vote and express their free will by electing their representative. It is important for there be no problems or incidents and for everything to go peacefully on July 3”, she said.

According to voter’s lists there should be about 2.8 million Albanians voting today, meanwhile participation during last local government elections barely passed 52% of total voters.

However, low participating levels during last elections did not reflect so much the voter’s negligence as much as the fact that these lists contained, as they do this time also, the names of several hundred thousand immigrants.

On one side there is the Socialist Party which has been in power for these last eight years. Its candidates have distinguished themselves for the enormous amounts of funds that they have poured into their campaigns. Unconfirmed information reports that 100 euro has been the price offered for a single vote; a price which would be equal to that which was paid in Italy for the same one vote.

On the other side, the center right Democratic Party, which has never been able to come up with all the necessary funds for its campaign, has been instead provided on several occasions with free air time by different media companies.

Slogans of both parties have been in direct opposition to the other. The Socialist’s, which were first to start the anti-advertisement campaign, have claimed that Berisha’s comeback to power would return the country under a ridiculous dictatorship very much suggestive of the 92-97 years.

Meanwhile, the opposition has accused the government of exceedingly monopolizing the economy. Currently, in Albania about 300 companies contribute only half of the state budged income for this year, only EUR1.2 billion or 16% of GDP.

The election race is joined by the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI), which is a  group of dissatisfied politicians who have departed from the SP and have in turn invested great sums of money into their campaign. Then there is the National Development Movement (LZHK), a group of politicians headed by the heir of king Ahmet Zogu who governed Albania between the First and Second World Wars period.

Meanwhile this time the European Council has removed the term “acceptable elections” from its statements by simply requesting free and fair elections. In 1997 the EC accepted resolved to accepting elections results because of having no other alternatives. Then, even in 2001, when elections were highly critiqued by international observers, they were accepted as progress compared to those in 1997.

Am Albanian elections Facts Book:

March 31, 1991. The communist government allowed for the first time participation of other parties during elections, besides the Democratic Front, in response to massive protests in the streets conducted by students whom a month before had also organized a hunger strike requesting such changes. The government won elections by 70%. Two days later, during an anticommunist protest in Shkodra, in the south of the country, three oppositions activists were killed in mysterious circumstances while participating in a massive protest.

March 30, 1992. Early elections where conducted after being permitted by the last communist ruler, Ramiz Alia. The Democratic Party in opposition won two-thirds of parliament seats. Then only a few months later this land-sliding win by the DP became pale in comparison to the left opposition’s win of about 50% of votes in local elections.

In 1994, the government consented that it had lost in a referendum for the approval of the constitution. A year later, in Feb. 20, 1995, during a terrorist bomb attack which killed four innocent civilians and started to use this tool for political reasons. The authors of that event remain still undiscovered.

May 22, 1996. Elections for the renewal of the parliament were won by the right government, lead by President Sali Berisha under an entire climate of massive manipulations.

A year later the entire country went into chaos and president Berisha had to accept early elections, which were won by the left opposition, during a time when over 2 million light guns and weapons roamed around the country in the hands of civilians.

In the 2001 elections, the Constitutional Court redistributed about 30% percent of parliamentary mandates, clearly favoring the government. Socialist won 74 MP against 34 MPs which were won by the opposition.

The October 30, 2003 local government elections showed improvements in the implementation of standards, however, the Constitutional Court decided to partially re-conduct elections in Tirana.