TIRANA, May 28 /ATA/ – Prime Minister and Socialist Party (SP) leader Edi Rama said on Thursday that the ruling Socialists have moved Albania “one step closer” to European Union membership, speaking at an event marking the 35th anniversary of the party’s founding in the southeastern city of Korça.
Rama said the date of May 26 carried particular significance in the party’s history, linking this year’s political developments with the disputed parliamentary elections of May 26, 1996.
He described the 1996 vote as a period when Socialists “faced violence and brutality that exposed Albania to the real challenge of building democracy after the fall of communism.”
Rama said SP representatives, local officials and election commissioners were subjected to violence during the elections, while the results themselves were “stolen by the degraded power of the Democratic Party.”
“It is difficult to imagine an Albania where the opposition was systematically mistreated, where there was only one television screen – Albanian state television – and where the opposition appeared only when accompanied by negative commentary,” he added.
Rama also said Albania at the time had only one opposition newspaper, which he said was destroyed by what he described as a “brutal regime”.
Turning to current developments, Rama said the ruling Socialists have helped bring Albania closer to what he described as the country’s historic goal of joining the European Union.
Referring to the latest Albania-EU intergovernmental conference in Brussels two days ago, May 26, Rama stated that “the Socialist Party has raised Albania one more step higher on its journey toward the summit,” which, in his view, represents both the legacy handed down by the ancestors and a debt owed to the children of Albanians.
“That summit is the home of a united Europe, where we will place Albania’s red-and-black flag,” he said.
Rama said the Socialist Party was the only political force in the past 35 years capable of maintaining “a proper relationship with the national interest, the past and the world”.
He also said Albania had entered a new phase in the EU accession process after opening all negotiation chapters and moving toward closing them.
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