By Plator Nesturi
The former allies have now turned into the worst opponents of this election campaign. Although they’re still governing together and up until yesterday, they considered it as “a car with two wheels”, the Socialist Party and Socialist Movement for Integration want to dismantle everything that they had together during this four year term in office. The Socialist Party and Prime Minister Edi Rama, are requesting at least a wheel to be removed from the government.
There is nothing extraordinary that two parties of the same spectrum, albeit former allies, launch strong accusations against each other during the election campaign and mainly attack with each other rather than the traditional opponent of the right wing. At the end of the day, both political forces operate within the same spectrum and are demanding the left wing electorate for votes. The number of votes that people will cast for the left is the same and doesn’t change. What is expected to change, however, are the ratios within the left wing. The growth of one party means a shrinking of the other and vice versa. Therefore, the tough election campaign which is being held between SP and SMI will aim, first of all, to establish how many wheels will there be within the left wing. The strengthening of one of them would deny the other one the possibility of having its own electoral wheel. Not to mention the government, because in this case, not only the wheel, but the brakes too would remain in a museum for the party that would be shrinking.
Fight for survival and who will control the left wing is, in fact, the most special thing of these parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Rama has unequivocally made his objective clear. He is demanding a bipolar system. He no longer wants to be bothered by anybody and he wants to have to fight with the Democratic Party alone, as representative of the right wing. The others have no business to be part of the “pie”.
We already knew that power had turned into a four seasons pizza pan, divided according to different tastes, but what we don’t know is how it will be afterwards, because nobody says it. Will it be vegetarian or with ham and mushrooms, or both of them together? We know that it’s not the pan that they must divide, but what’s inside of it.
However, the strong tones are not a novelty in Albanian campaigns. What’s new and what makes it even more serious is the plaint filed at the Prosecution by the Socialist Movement for Integration against the Prime Minister and the request to convene the High Security Council regarding his declarations. Never before has there been an incentive of this kind.
The battles against Berisha have been tough and full of tension, but never before have so many accusations launched against the Prime Minister. The attacks of the Socialist Movement for Integration against State Police have been going on in the past few days and the request to remove Police Commissioner, Haki Çako is nothing new. The incidents occurred during the campaign, involving followers and supporters of the Socialist Party and Socialist Movement for Integration, have been accompanied with accusations for use of police in favor of one side and in direct involvement in the election campaign. If they are proven, they would be very serious accusations which would cast a shadow of doubt on what is considered to be a successful reform within police. But in this case, the complained filed at the Prosecution is not against the heads of police, but against the Prime Minister himself, who from Kuçova issued a declaration in defence of these acts, which according to SMI, violates the law and the decision approved by the government.
Although the request to convene the High Council of Justice seems a little exaggerated, because we are only dealing with a declaration, the plaint filed at the Prosecution remains and it can act as a cause in the future to ruin the image of the elections. Nonetheless, although the Prosecution took this issue under consideration, this is an indicator that the last days of the campaign will be filled with conflicts within the left wing spectrum. It seems that the war now is not being done to divide the pan, but to overthrow it with everything it has inside.
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Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Albanian Free Press’ editorial policy.
