06.06.1996

Bourgeois democracy, Albanian style

An election has just taken place in Albania - well, sort of. The two main political forces in the country are the Democratic Party, led by president Sali Berisha, and the ‘post-communist’ Socialist Party, the successor to the Party of Labour of Albania, long headed by the late Enver Hoxha.

The Socialist Party pulled out of the elections halfway through polling day, alleging intimidation and ballot-rigging by the supporters of the ruling Democratic Party. Foreign observers also detected signs of sharp practice, resulting in some international pressure on Albania to hold the election again, but this has only been done in a few constituencies.

There has clearly been violence. The hatred and tensions left over from the past have not been worked through in Albania. This is visible in the press of the rival parties. The Socialist Party daily Zeri i Popullit (Voice of the People) reported that the party’s protest rally over the elections in the capital, Tirana, on May 28 was disrupted by  “Berisha’s state police, the National Intelligence Service, and gangs of hooligans and vandals” who “enacted a pre-planned scenario of unprecedented violence”.   The article was headlined, “No to the dictatorship! We will win! Long live genuine democracy!”

Leading Socialist Party members are currently on hunger strike, and they are particularly looking to the US authorities for support against Berisha. This is ironic, since the party in its earlier form loudly denounced US imperialism, along with Soviet and Chinese social imperialism, Titoite revisionism and so on. Today however it is actually as pro-market as the Democrats. Its socialist credentials are as thin as the Democrats’ democratic ones.

The ruling party’s daily, Rilindja Demokratike (Democratic Rebirth), loudly denounced the Socialist Party on May 29. It said that “the Red apologists are trying to encourage an artificial revenge by the extreme left in order to usurp democracy in Albania with the aim of imposing the rotten programme of primitive socialism, to paralyse and utterly destroy Albanian national feelings”, and much more in the same vein. There is irony here too: in tone, if not in substance, the heated rhetoric is reminiscent of official propaganda under Hoxha, when Albania was apparently the sole bastion of socialism in the world.

Andrew MacKay