Vranicki—lightning from Venice
Andreatta: “No party or individual in Albania should play games by moving the election date back and forth”
Elections: politics that is in no hurry
. Vranicki’s mission in Tirana has marked the latest development on the political scene. Apart from a formal meeting between Berisha and Leka I, nothing has happened in the last 48 hours, although Albanian politics now has little time to lose. The impression is growing that the parties cannot manage to engage in dialogue with one another or take political initiatives except under external pressure. With only a few weeks left before the elections (if one goes by the 9 March agreement), many questions still hang over the choice of a solution to the crisis in Albania. The final election date has not been announced, the final form of the electoral law under which voting will take place has not yet been decided, and it is still unknown what compromise will be reached on the issue of the committees and the arming of the population. Just a few hours after leaving Albania, Vranicki reiterated that the election date would be 29 June. He ... stated in Venice, in the presence of Italian Defence Minister Andreatta, that all Albanian political forces had agreed to the date mentioned above. This appears to have been a lightning-fast rejoinder to Tritan Shehu’s responsibility, and perhaps also a signal that the West is determined to hold the elections by June. This rumour gains strength when one takes into account Andreatta’s forceful tone: he declared that European countries do not have the money to finance the whims of Albanian politicians. Berisha and his party’s stubborn refusal to confirm the date appears to be merely a delaying tactic to buy time. In fact, what the PD needs most now is to postpone the elections, so that it can repair as much as possible the poor image it has created both abroad and at home. The second legal obstacle follows the same line of reasoning. Alone against the rest of the parties, the PD insists on retaining the existing electoral law. Calculating that no more than 20 MPs would emerge from the areas controlled by the committees, the PD and Berisha have decided to write those areas off by putting forward no candidates there, and to fight hard in the remaining areas, stretching from Fier to the North. The threat the president made against the PS at his meeting with Vranicki—that the Socialists would have serious problems with two-thirds of the electorate—confirms precisely this plan, which can only be carried out by retaining the existing election law and using violence on election day. But it is unlikely that the PD will prevail against the other eight parties. This is also because the West may side with the peace parties, since proportional voting is simpler, less costly, and its results are easier to establish. These circumstances could determine the choice of the final option. The most dangerous “iceberg” on the road to elections nevertheless remains the compromise concerning the committees. The cancellation of Vranicki’s visit shows that on this issue the PD and the President are applying maximum pressure, which means that the desire to apply maximum pressure is for a decision satisfactory to everyone, but as long as the PD considers the committees “the only obstacle to normalization,” while the opposition sees them as a phenomenon brought about by the absence of the state and as a consequence of political dialogue. Following several contacts with the Committees of the South, the opposition, which wants to get to elections as quickly as possible, needs to move swiftly to win through elections. But that does not seem easy, as long as the committees and, generally, the situation in the South are not under the parties’ total control.