Albanians began voting yesterday in legislative elections seen as crucial to their country's ambition to join the EU but overshadowed by fears that whatever the result it will be rejected by the loser and even lead to violence.
A free and fair vote is crucial for Albania as it hopes to sign a stabilization and association accord with the EU this year and join the European bloc in 2014.
Some 2.8 million voters were called on to elect 140 deputies, choosing from 1,253 candidates belonging to 27 parties and coalitions. The new parliament will name the prime minister, the head of the winning party.
The main rivals for the parliamentary race were the biggest opposition force, the Democratic party of former president Sali Berisha and the Socialist party of outgoing Prime Minister Fatos Nano.
Nano, who has been prime minister for three terms, hoped to obtain a fresh mandate in yesterday's elections, to confirm his image as the main partisan of country's integration into the European institutions.
But Berisha, who has often accused Nano of corruption and links with organized crime, maintains that, after eight years in opposition, his party is best placed to bring about the necessary changes in Albania.
Much of the rest of the vote is likely to go to the newly-formed Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) of former premier Ilir Meta, a breakaway socialist who hopes to hold the balance of power and break the duopoly of the Democrats and the Socialists on the Albanian political scene.
However, it is almost certain that no single party will win an absolute majority in the parliament.
The vote is seen as vital to the desperately poor Balkan country's hopes of further integration into European institutions such as NATO and the EU.
According to a recent UN report, a quarter (25.4 percent) of Albania's three million inhabitants live below the poverty line, on less than US$2 per day.
"These elections should confirm that the society has adopted European democratic standards," President Alfred Moisiu said.
And EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana insisted that "the conduct of the elections will make clear whether Albania's democratic system has reached the level which will allow for the next steps to be taken in its Euro-Atlantic integration."
The EU has clearly warned the government that widespread irregularities in the election could compromise Albania's prospects of joining Western institutions such as NATO and the EU.
"I am pessimistic. It's almost impossible that the loser, whoever this is, will accept the results," warned Tirana's Socialist mayor Edi Rama.
Rama, who in 2004 received the World Mayor award, told reporters that "in Albania, there is no culture of accepting defeat."
"I can hardly imagine anyone telling Albanians: `I've lost,'" he said.
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