PSD–PAD: Coalition with PS in doubt
Nano in the West, first stop Vienna. Constitutional Roundtable begins in failure; PD boycotts. SCANDAL! Embassy in Vienna manipulates the President’s letter
The PS grassroots threaten the leadership
As could have been expected, the Socialist leader would find it very difficult to implement the idea of a “broad-based coalition” without problems. By allocating ministerial portfolios and important posts in the administration to his smaller allies, Nano may not have considered the scale of the reaction from his party’s grassroots. PS militants were first and foremost disappointed to see their favourites, well-known PS figures, left out of the government cabinet and other state institutions. On the other hand, a sizeable part of the socialist rank and file and electorate’s supporters—from those who keep watch at PS headquarters to those who have felt the rubber truncheons of Berisha’s police on their backs at rallies—feel embittered at not receiving what they had hoped for from the victory of 29 June. The truth is that soon after Mr Nano’s cabinet was announced, PS headquarters, which until then had become places of pilgrimage, began to be visited very rarely, and in some towns around the country they were locked up. The Socialist leader may have anticipated such a reaction, but he now also faces growing pressure from the governing bodies of the allied parties. Thus, after being allocated important posts, they are increasingly forcefully demanding that “the coalition also extend to the grassroots”. Indeed, there have also been threats to break up the governing coalition.
The truth is that Nano and the PS leadership are now suffering the consequences of a policy based on improvisation with regard to forming the coalition, without having considered in time how to reach a compromise on this issue—as if, before the elections, they did not think they would win. Despite the mistaken tendency in Albania to allocate posts according to the degree of party militancy, the PS leaders should have prepared their party’s members in advance for the fact that the allies, though small, would have to be “given something more than a few crumbs”. Now ordinary PS members, many of whom may have lost their jobs and other rights because of their party activism, have every reason to be surprised at how allies with 2 percent of the vote—most of which was “pushed” their way by the PS—could be given such large “slices”. Besides, PS militants have not forgotten the statement by PAD leader Neritan Ceka, one of the allied parties, on the eve of the elections, that he would decide whether to remain in the coalition “after reviewing 200 days of PS government”.
Given that the PS is the only party with a strong grassroots base, the discontent that has arisen under these circumstances could find an outlet directed against the party leadership. In this way, facing a resurgent PD, the PS grassroots could, at a given moment, prove to be the most dangerous opponent for Mr Nano and his government. Moreover, the forms of internal factional struggle should also be taken into account, as they are even fiercer. FRESSH has often been seen in public, alongside the part of the electorate that is becoming disillusioned with the PS government’s cabinet and its performance.