Deputy Interior Minister: Çelo returns today. DP, Hajdari Interior Minister. OSCE: SP has won 60%. The monarchists block the roads At midnight on Tuesday, Berisha called for tanks on the roads leading into Tirana and at the Bank of Albania. Fino: I will not allow the Constitution to be violated.

A rally in Tirana’s central square and the blocking of the Tirana–Shkodër national highway yesterday revived the idea that the state of violence is not over and, indeed, is still active. The monarchists, protagonists of an adventurous referendum to restore the prewar monarchy, are keeping alive the flames of a political conflict that many thought had died down on the evening of 29 June. The referendum, the gift Berisha left in Durollari’s hands on the day of the 9 May agreement, has become the anticipated knot in Albanian politics, generating absurd but very dangerous tension. It takes little effort to understand that the farce and fuss surrounding the results of the referendum on the monarchy are as artificial as they are unsupported by the documentation that the relevant authorities are slowly completing amid a dispute being deliberately stirred up. Deliberately. The stubborn percentages showing the monarchy’s popularity consistently indicate that Leka Zogu will remain an ordinary citizen and not the heir to the dynasty from Mat. With 39% of the votes recorded by the CEC by yesterday at noon, after documentation had arrived from 49% of the territory, the new regime “imported” along with Leka Zogu from Johannesburg no longer has any chance of winning. But this is where the Albanian tragicomedy begins. The more the percentages show the monarchy’s decline and the Republic’s consolidation, the louder the monarchists and the newly defeated Democrats make their uproar over the result. In the middle of a storm that would normally be considered “a storm in a teacup,” both sides have found a common enemy to fight: the SP and Fatos Nano. And since there is very little normality in Albania at present, the protest of the right-wing monarcho-republicans is also creating a tense atmosphere between the two rounds of elections. While Leka Zogu meets Berisha and the latter promises him help, a silent rallying call has prompted the ranks of fanatics from the former ruling party to fall in with the monarchist army. Now that the elections have left them defeated, the Democrats seem to have decided to put spokes in the wheels of the new winners once again. But not as before, by directly manipulating or rejecting the result. Neither of these options has been possible this time. So the monarchy has been found as the “nail” with which to make the noise that they could not make over the general elections. The presidential press and the pro-DP press have already taken it for granted that the referendum on the monarchy has been won, although so far they have published no evidence to substantiate this claim. Albania’s recent history has taught us that this kind of orchestrated propaganda appears whenever a friend or opponent of what until yesterday was Sali Berisha’s regime needs to be helped or attacked. Until yesterday, because today Berisha is at the final station. Now the monarchy must be helped, the last lifebuoy for all those who spent five years afloat on the sunken Titanic of the DP. Still, one consolation remains for them: the famous saying of the French monarchy, “The king is dead, long live the king.”

PS leader Nano and Prime Minister Fino greet fans after the victory, in Skënderbej Square Photo REUTERS PS leader Nano and Prime Minister Fino greet fans after the victory, in Skënderbej Square. Photo REUTERS