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Rama heading for 4th term, Reuters: International observers questioned the fairness of the elections

Politiko 2025-05-13 18:01:27

Rama heading for 4th term, Reuters: International observers questioned the
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has secured an unprecedented fourth term in power after his Socialist Party swept to victory in Sunday’s election, official results showed Tuesday, though the opposition claims the votes were stolen.
With 96% of ballots counted, the Socialist Party (SP) had 52% of the vote, ahead of the second-place Democratic Party (DP) on 34%, figures from the electoral commission showed. As things stand, the SP wins 82 seats in the 140-seat parliament, while the DP takes 52.

If confirmed, the result would expand the SP’s four-seat majority and give Rama a significant margin to form a government. It would also allow him to continue working to fulfill his promise to take Albania into the European Union by 2030, although many experts say that timeframe is optimistic given the reforms required, particularly in eradicating corruption.
However, doubts have clouded the results. International observers have questioned the fairness of the election, and Albania’s special prosecutor said he was investigating 39 election-related cases, mostly of vote-buying. He did not say which parties were under suspicion.

The leader of the Democratic Party, former president and prime minister Sali Berisha, rejected the results and called for a protest on May 16, the day leaders from across Europe are scheduled to gather in the capital Tirana for a summit.
"We will never accept these elections - never," Berisha said at a news conference on Tuesday in which he alleged irregularities without publicly providing evidence.
Berisha continued the harsh language of the campaign, calling Rama a "narco-dictator." In a statement to Reuters, Rama’s SP denied election fraud and called Berisha, 80, “an old and hopeless former communist politician” — a particular insult in a country that was isolated from the world for 50 years under harsh communist rule until 1990. Rama, in power since 2013, had been the favorite to win the election, supported in part by an influential network built during 12 years in power, a recent period of healthy economic growth and a divided opposition.
Two days before the vote, he forgave all government fines from 2015 to 2024, including traffic, construction and health and safety violations. The government has not set a price for the fines, but the opposition says they amount to 200 million euros.
However, the scale of the victory has surprised some analysts who had expected corruption scandals and recent unrest to dent Rama’s lead.
Instead, the landslide victory could prolong a sense of predictability in Albania in contrast to other Balkan countries such as Kosovo, Serbia and Bulgaria, where ruling parties have faced political crises over the past year.
“Nobody expected there to be a qualified majority for a single party. It’s like (Hungarian Prime Minister) Orban in his best days,” said political analyst Lutfi Dervishi.
Rama has won Western support by accepting migrants from Italy and sheltering Afghans waiting for visas to the United States to be processed.
But voters at home say he runs the country with a patronage system and has done little to stamp out unemployment and corruption that includes Albanian gangs that launder drug and arms money in the country. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians have emigrated since Rama came to power, seeking better prospects abroad.
An international election monitoring mission led by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said there had been a "misuse of public resources and institutional power by the ruling party" during the campaign. It said there were "multiple reports of pressure on public employees and other voters, as well as cases of intimidation." Reuters