Sela waiting for Kasami and Gashi to reconcile, Thaci out of the picture
Alliance for Albanians leader Zijadin Sela is waiting for the fighting friends of BESA – Bilal Kasami and Afrim Gashi – to overcome their misunderstandings and then join the battle to oust DUI from power. In the possible coalition against the ruling DUI, there would be room for everyone except Menduh Thaci’s DPA, whom Sela considers a close ally of Ali Ahmeti. However, the DPA membership is welcomed to join the Alliance.
Five and a half months before the early parliamentary elections, Albanian political parties make the latest calculations before the April 12th, 2020 vote. The stakes are high: DUI is struggling to stay in power where it has spent 15 of its 17 years of existence, with the opposition sensing that now is the time to tear down the bastion, which they say is for personal gain rather than promotion of the rights of Albanians and improving the lives of citizens.
“According to our polls, the Alliance for Albanians will win if it goes to the polls alone. DUI’s time is over. However, to make victory more credible, we are open to cooperation with both BESA of Kasami and Gashi’s Alternative. It is up to them to see whether they can put aside their personal animosity, and in the interests of greater goals join forces and defeat the clientelistic DUI”, a senior Alliance for Albanians official told Nezavisen Vesnik/Independent Daily newspaper.
He says that numbers constantly show that his party has the highest rating among the citizens, making it common for the Alliance to head any possible coalition.
“We are aware that the party’s leader Sela will not be a term holder in the new government, because it is not realistic to expect that the Alliance and the possible coalition partners will win more votes than the two largest Macedonian parties, but if we act together, we will gain respectable support, after which we can push and deliver on the program and the promises we make to citizens. In this battle, DPA members and supporters are also welcome. We invite them to join the Alliance for Albanians. The invitation does not apply to their president Menduh Thaci, whom we consider to be Ahmeti’s obedient servant, because his actions have helped DUI stay in power all these years”, the official told Nezavisen Vesnik/Independent Daily newspaper.
Afrim Gashi, who formed the Alternative after the BESA conflict and with his three MPs are part of the ruling majority, says all options are open.
“Whether we will go to the polls in coalition with the opposition, with the DUI, just with the Alliance or on our own, we have not decided yet. The early elections are months away, a lot of things can happen. All options are open”, Afrim Gashi told Nezavisen Vesnik/Independent Daily newspaper.
Kasami is also convinced that the majority of Albanians want DUI in opposition, which is why it is ready to coalition with all parties both from the government (Alternative, DPA, NDP) as well as the opposition.
“We are raising the stakes and we are calling for a general unification of Albanians in order to overthrow DUI once and for all. We would like a pre-election coalition to be sure that the opposition vote will bring about change in the country, but if that does not happen, we would like some kind of cooperation with the Alliance for the Albanians after the elections, as we now have closer positions as opposition parties”, Kasami pointed out.
The DUI is not worried about calls for consolidation of the Albanian opposition. But Ahmeti’s overwhelming optimism at the start of the election campaign informally launched, according to analysts, has no real basis given the DUI’s dramatic drop in voter turnout, which occurred between the two election cycles in 2014 and 2016. . In 2014, the DUI won 153,000 votes, and two years later only 86,000, a figure that was more or less confirmed by the councilors’ mandates in the 2017 local elections.
Those local elections shifted the order of the parties in the Albanian political bloc. If the DUI stagnated and Besa lost about 10,000 votes from the 57,000 won in the parliamentary elections ten months earlier, the only party that has grown since is the Alliance, which managed to win over 50,000 votes (35,000 parliamentary votes) and surpass Besa, which they already cooperated with in the recent presidential elections when they backed presidential candidate Blerim Reka.
“I see April 12, 2020 as a day of great victory for the Democratic Union for Integration. With such a Union, there is no power that can defeat us, because first we have established mission, ideals, and now functions. There is no function without mission, no chances to reach the goal if you lose your ideals. Not just because this is our family, but name one party or movement that has contributed to this country more than our family”, said DUI leader Ahmeti.
Goran Adamovski