Albania's Socialist premier wins second term

TIRANA: Albania's Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama has won a second term in power, near final results showed Tuesday, putting him in the driver's seat for potential talks on his nation joining the EU.
With 96% of polling stations tallied, the Socialists had grabbed 49% of the vote cast in Sunday's election. Their main rivals in the centre-right Democratic Party took less than 30%.
Albania, one of Europe's poorest nations, has been an official candidate for EU accession since 2014 and Rama aims to open negotiations by year's end.
The Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI), traditionally the kingmaking party in Albanian politics, was on track to win 15% of the vote.
Media reports say 52-year-old Rama, an artist and former Tirana mayor who took power in 2013, seemed likely to secure an absolute majority of 74 seats in the 140-seat parliament, allowing the Socialists to govern alone.
Voter turnout, at less than 50%, was one of the lowest in an Albanian election since the fall of communism in the early 1990s.
'Slow and inefficient'
Although Sunday's soaring temperatures and the end of Ramadan were thought to have affected turnout, disillusionment with the state's economic development may also have played a part, analysts said.
The electoral commission may announce final results Tuesday for the vote, which went off without any major incidents. Elections in the country of 2.9 million over the past quarter-century have been marred by fraud, violence and disputed results.
It was a welcome occurrence for Tirana, which is trying to convince Brussels to open accession talks by the end of the year's end, but the road to membership remains long.
In its last report on Albania in November, the European Commission said the judicial system remained "slow and inefficient" and marred by corruption.
It also noted that criminal gangs behind Albania's lucrative but illicit cannabis cultivation and trafficking remained at large.
The Democrats accused Rama of links to organised crime and turning the country into a "drugstore" — accusations the premier rejected.
Albania remains one of the poorest countries in Europe, with an average monthly wage of €340 (RM1,642.68) and unemployment affecting nearly one in three young people, fuelling the highest emigration levels in the world.
The two main parties offered similar socio-economic platforms, liberal in inspiration. — AFP