The main objectives for the race in Tirana

The main objectives for the race in Tirana
This article has been written for Albanian Free Press newspaper and www.afp.al

By EDUARD ZALOSHNJA

Following the major defeat suffered in the June parliamentary elections, the Democratic Party will continue to contest their result through the report of its technocrat ministers. But, as usual, it’s the final report of OSCE-ODIHR, the one that will seal the legitimacy of the elections and based on the preliminary report of OSCE-ODIHR, chances are that the final report will contain key phrases such as “In spite of the irregularities, the election results reflected in general the will of the Albanian voters”.

Lulzim Basha must be prepared for such scenario and under these circumstances, he needs to think and find a suitable candidate for the race in the municipality of Tirana. Only a victory of the opposition candidate in Tirana could politically revive Basha, who has been “destroyed” by the June elections, where the Democratic Party won only 31% of seats in Parliament.

A victory of the DP’s candidates in the municipalities of Shkoder or Kamez, will not account for a political surprise, while unexpected victories such as the one in Pogradec or Permet two years ago, do not convey any significant political message. Those victories may be the result of local grudges between left wing candidates rather than significant changes among voters in those municipalities.

In other words, the race in Tirana will act, as usual, as a political test of the Albanian voters’ humor.

Perhaps, bearing this in mind, Erjon Veliaj has started this race since day one that he entered the mayor’s office. With his motto “Every day we work for the capital”, Veliaj has managed to come out almost every day on television by inspecting works carried out by the municipality or inaugurating the start or the completion of a small or a big project of the municipality. As a result of this strategy, an electronic opinion poll conducted by questia.al suggested that 64% of Albanians have a positive opinion on Veliaj, while only 54% of them have a positive opinion for Rama.

However, only the residents of Tirana vote for the mayor of the capital.

Two years ago, Veliaj won 53.6% of the votes in the capital. Meanwhile, in the June elections of this year, the Socialist Party obtained only 51% in Tirana. These results indicate that with SMI in opposition, Veliaj’s victory is not certain (it could have been considered certain if the SP had received 61% of votes in June this year).

But, in order for the race to be strong, opposition parties (DP, SMI, etc), must come out with a joint candidate, who will have the full support of all of them, because in the elections held two months ago, 17 parties in the race (except SP) obtained 49% of the votes in the capital. If there are several opposition candidates running for the post of the mayor of Tirana, then this 49 percent would be divided into several parts.

And the question now is whether Lulzim Basha will be ready to build a strong pre-election alliance with SMI and other small parties or whether he will follow the long-term strategy of an eventual political isolation of SMI.

Both of these possible strategies that may be followed by Basha, have their own problems. If he chooses the long-term strategy of politically avoiding SMI, Basha may promote a candidate such as Halim Kosova, who was more successful in absorbing right wing votes (Kosova obtained as many votes as the right wing coalition had obtained in the expanded territory of the municipality of Tirana in 2013). But, let us not forget that however successful Kosova may be in attracting right wing votes, he lost the elections with a difference of 45 thousand votes.

On the other hand, if Basha forges a strategic alliance with SMI, he needs to choose a candidate who will be able to attract the votes of the right wing and the left wing supporters of SMI. And this is not an easy thing to achieve, however, even if such candidate is found, he may only end up with 49% of the votes. And a loss is a loss, even if the difference is small…

At the conclusion of this analysis, it can be said that Veliaj starts his race in “pole position” and he only needs to win an extra 5-10 thousand votes more than in 2015 to win the race with a mathematical certainty.

Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Albanian Free Press’ editorial policy

 

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