Albania’s Election: Edi’s Turn

THE next prime minister of Albania will be Edi Rama, leader of the Socialist Party. With almost all the votes counted after voting took place on June 23rd, his coalition looks likely to take 84 out of 140 seats in parliament—a landslide. The result ends eight years of rule by Sali Berisha’s centre-right Democratic Party, but Mr Berisha has been around much longer than that. No Albanian under 30 can remember a time when he was not a dominant political presence.Mr Rama is a former mayor of the capital, Tirana. In the 2009 election he accused the Democrats of cheating him of victory. In 2011 he claimed to have won a new term as mayor, but the Democrats snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by adding in votes cast in the wrong boxes. A protest in January of the same year led to four Socialist supporters being shot dead by security forces firing from the prime minister’s office. Mr Berisha accused Mr Rama of trying to oust him by force.In the past few years under Mr Berisha, spanking new roads and other infrastructure have sprouted across Albania. Cyclists zoom down bicycle lanes in central Tirana and along new roads in previously ramshackle towns like Shkoder, in the north. After the end of communism, Albania’s highways gradually disintegrated. When he was mayor Mr Rama also transformed Tirana, bulldozing many ugly and illegal buildings and painting dowdy communist blocks in…

The Economist: Europe