Albania Opposition Supporters Clash With Police

“When opposition supporters moved the trucks away, the police tried to step in and block the road with their cars,” said Balkan Insight correspondent Gjergj Erebara, reporting from the spot of the rally outside the Prime Minister’s Office.

“One man got injured when a police car drove over him, as he and some other supporters set up a human barricade,” Erebara added.

Television footage showed one of the heads of state police, Krenar Ahmeti, hand-cuffing himself beneath a truck carrying materials for the rally of the opposition in a desperate attempt to stop it from going through.  

The row erupted when the Socialists were stopped by police from setting their stage in front of the Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday evening, were they intend to hold their final rally.

By noon on Friday the police had cleared the blockade and opened the boulevard for traffic, allowing the preparations of the opposition to continue.    

Albania’s main political parties, the Democratic Party of right-wing Prime Minister Sali Berisha and the Socialists of Tirana Mayor Edi Rama, will hold their campaign events in Tirana, climaxing what has been considered generally a quiet campaign.

What promises to be a spectacle show, with entertainers and fireworks, will see the arch rivals and their supporters transported by bus from across the country set up only a few blocks from each other on Tirana’s Zog I Blvd, the city’s main throughfare.

The rallies will be the final act of a campaign, before political parties go into electoral silence until polls close at 7 p.m. on Sunday.  

The capital has been covered for weeks in electoral posters branding the symbols and the figures of the two leaders, while loudspeakers mounted into cars try to lure undecided voters.

According to a poll published on June 18, conducted by Zogby International for Top Channel TV, Berisha’s Democratic Party is ahead of the opposition Socialists, though the final outcome is still too close to call.

In the poll, 40 per cent of those who answered said they would vote for the Democrats, 38 per cent for the Socialists, while the Socialist Movement for Integration, led by ex-prime minister Ilir Meta, trailed far behind, with only 4 per cent approval.

Facing a difficult and often tumultuous transition to democracy since the collapse of the communist regime in 1991, Albania’s former elections have been marred by fraud and violence. 

Now newly promoted to NATO membership and having filed for EU candidate status as well, the ballot is seen as a crucial test of the country’s democratic credentials.