Eurasia Press & News
The Socialist Movement for Integration, LSI, announced on Saturday, that it had accepted a request from right-wing incumbent Prime Minister Sali Berisha, to join the ruling coalition after last Sunday’s poll.
Speaking at a press conference in Tirana, the LSI head and former Socialist Prime Minister Ilir Meta said that the decision had been difficult, however this was the right thing to do when the country faced political and economic crises.
“This is once of the toughest decision I have taken in my two decades in politics,” Meta said. “We are forced to move toward an agreement which serves Albania and Albanians and their European Union integration hopes,” he added, pointing that after the results of Sunday’s poll cooperation with Socialist Party leader and Tirana mayor Edi Rama was impossible.
However, in an interview with Balkan Insight on the eve of the elections Meta had strongly rejected a possible coalition with Berisha.
“It’s not only impossible but also unnecessary,” Meta said in the interview.
Unofficial results from Sunday’s poll show that the Democratic Party’s coalition, the “Alliance for Change” has so far won 70 seats in the 140-seat assembly, ahead of the Socialist coalition’s 66 deputies,. Third came the coalition headed by the Socialist Movement for Integration, LSI, with four deputies.
Final official results from the Central Electoral Commission are expected on Monday, after the counting by commissioners of several disputed ballot boxes.
Berisha needs one more deputy to secure a parliamentary majority of 71 deputies in the national assembly and has declared that he is open to expand his coalition, while presenting himself as the winner of the poll.
“It was not a wide victory, but it was victory, and whatever small or large victories shine,” he said during a press conference on Thursday.
The LSI, a splinter party from the Socialists, tried repeatedly to cooperate with Rama before the elections but its overtures were rejected bluntly by the Socialist leader.
