Lordi: “Rejection is the denial of democracy” Finsberg: “The Socialists should return to Parliament” The participation of the representatives of the European Ad-Hoc Commission, which was meeting for the first time in Tirana with the parliamentary side, lasted only a few minutes. Was this a meeting of a committee of the external quota of one side? Or was it one side only? It was about the opposition and not its representatives, with a few selected deputies, but that changed nothing. Their answer was clear: they had not come to negotiate the decisions of the elections of 26 May, but to appeal to the political parties to clarify relations inside the Albanian Assembly. Meanwhile, the deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and of the Council of Europe, contacted in the afternoon with one of its five members, for the President of Albania and PD leader Sali Berisha, to exclude election politics. The clear programme that had been set for all participants was a return to normality. Finsberg called the authority of the elections clearer in a count following the elections of 26 May, a process that should end with the participation of the opposition. According to him, the Ad-Hoc commission group had come to Tirana with only one mission: to call on the parliamentary parties to return to Parliament, complete the dialogue and put an end to the situation created after the elections of 26 May. “There are no winners here. Today we all need compromise and dialogue,” said Lordi, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and at the same time head of the Ad-Hoc Commission delegation. He stressed that the Council of Europe Commission is not the only one asking for the opposition’s return to Parliament, but “we must do everything for its return to Parliament, because that is how we save democracy in Albania.” He also explained that “rejection is the denial of democracy.”