Lulzim Basha finally wins the May 8th Tirana mayoral election!

Let me just start off by saying that Albanian politics is messy.  Politics on the national level is bad enough, and some violent demonstrations in January of this year are an indication of that.  The Democratic Party and the Socialist Party are the two main political groups. From what I can tell, there has been bad blood between the DP and SP ever since the summer 2009 elections, when the Democratic Party formed a coalition with a more moderate socialist group and gained the majority in Parliament; the SP cried that there had been foul play and there has been a stalemate in the governing process ever since.  I hope no Albania experts are reading this because there’s a lot more to it than this skin-deep survey of the situation, but for our purposes, this is adequate!  In January 2011 it got pretty ugly; a violent demonstration on January 21 of the socialists against the DP, calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Sali Berisha, led to four shooting deaths and it’s still being investigated.  On May 8^th, local elections were held all over the country -  the most volatile of them was the Tirana mayoral election – the socialist incumbent, Edi Rama, against the democratic candidate, Lulzim Basha.  As it turned out, Basha seemed to have narrowly won by something like 81 votes… this has led to more cries of foul play, and appeals to the Electoral College and recounts ad infinitum have been going on since then. 

This past Friday evening, Ned, Jorid, the kids and I went out for a stroll to the downtown area.  It was a nice night, and half the city was out with us – a great night for people watching.  Lydia, 11, and Marcus, 12, asked for a few lëk to buy some roasted corn on the cob, for sale on almost every corner.  People set up little charcoal grills and husk corn, grilling the ears and making a brisk business of it… walking further, we saw a crowd gathering outside the Democratic Party headquarters.  I would have wanted to go check it out, but with three children in tow it probably wasn’t the greatest idea, so we continued on and ended up at a fun “International Patisserie” with outdoor seating under a broad awning.  We all decided it was a great time for ice cream (when isn’t it a great time for ice cream?), and as we were waiting, we saw on a TV screen in the bar area of the café, the Democratic Party headquarters that we had just walked by.  The crowd had grown, and Lulzim Basha was addressing the crowd, proclaiming that he definitively had been elected Mayor.  The crowd cheered; fireworks were set off; the streets, as we were walking home, were filled with processions of honking cars with people hanging out the windows, shouting and waving DP blue & white flags… And I didn’t have my camera with me!!!  Ugh!  I could kick myself.