Normalcy Albanian style

Albania has gone to the polls, leaving behind the grim balance of two people shot dead at the ballot box, and gunmen setting fire to ballot-slips elsewhere. Fifteen polling stations were prevented from opening. All in all, said local reports, it was a "normal and quiet polling day."

Naturally, it fell to both the governing Socialists and the self-styled Democrats to declare themselves winners even before the votes had been counted. Yet it appears that the Socialists possess the greater stamina, after the Democrats had beaten an early retreat amid claims that they had been swindled.

Including the inevitable run-off and by-elections, final results are in any case not expected for a good week. Yet, the expected victory by the Socialists could indeed endow the country with a phase of stability and normalcy.

When in 1997 they took over the reins of power from the Democrats (under the still-active and chronic troublemaker Sali Berisha), Albania was teetering along the brink of anarchy. Since then, it is its neighbors who have been engulfed here and there in flames. There was the war in Kosovo, and since the last few months, an Albanian uprising in Macedonia has brought all-out war close again. In the mother country, however, no one succumbed to the nationalist tub-thumping of their ethnic cousins, remaining by and large calm and co-operative. For this, they been amply rewarded by the West with financial aid.

Even if corruption remains one of its biggest problems, Albania has recorded its first investment coups. Over the last years, it achieved growth rates of up to eight per cent and inflation is under control. In this context, the Socialists deserve an election win.

-- Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany.