By Peter Annear in Prague
The victory of Salih Berisha's Democratic Party in the country's second general election in 12 months marks the opening of a new stage in Albanian politics. The conservative victory signals the failure of reforms begun by the Ramiz Alia leadership of the former Party of Labour, since June 1991 the Socialist Party.
The Democrats won 76 seats in the first round of voting for 140 parliamentary seats, this time winning rural support which they failed to garner in elections last March — partly due to a lack of transport, the party claimed.
The vote for the Socialist Party, which won an absolute majority last year, fell below 25%. Social Democrats and the conservative Republicans should also be represented in the new parliament.
The sight of Democratic Party candidates touring the countryside in brand new US jeeps, accompanied by US diplomats, is enough to indicate that the United States played an active role in the March 22 election.
Immediately after the March 1991 results were announced, the US State Department questioned the election procedures, and the Democratic Party called for a 24-hour protest strike which won only half-hearted support from the newly independent unions. Thereafter, a process of destabilisation set in.
With German and Austrian capital better placed to enter central Europe, the US has devoted greater attention to the southern region. It was therefore an important election for the US and caps a long history of intervention in Albania. (In the early 1950s the US was actively engaged in a plot to overthrow the Communist government by paramilitary force.)
Liti Shimani, vice-president of the Women's Forum of Albania, said people celebrated in the streets following the Democrats' win. There are high hopes that the new government will secure much-needed US financial support, even though there is very little in the US coffers for rescues in eastern Europe.
"People hope there will be more stability and a state of justice", Shimani told Green Left Weekly. "The elections opened the way for the unification of Albania with Europe.
"The economic situation is very difficult. Under Alia the government began changes in agriculture, and people hope further changes will continue in industry and in the towns.
"The most important thing is that people want progress."
But overcoming Albania's deep crisis using market-based liberal economic measures may prove a pipedream.
Today, Tirana is a very uncertain place. Many local officials carry pistols, while foreign business people hire body guards. Crime has y worsens.
In one incident, Shkelzen Maliqui, head of the Social Democratic Party of the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, was attacked by a gang of youths while walking in Tirana. He was robbed, stripped of his clothes and forced to wait in a car until someone found him a pair of trousers.
In rural centres the situation may be worse still. An Albanian radio reporter described a scene in the southern border town of Pogradec in which thousands of people, most between 18 and 25, attacked warehouses of the workers' supply enterprises and privately owned retail stores. When the police intervened, the youths headed off for the industrial area and broke into warehouses there.
Industrial output is a mere 20% of what it was before 1990. Disputes over land privatisation resulted in virtually no cereals being planted last autumn, causing agricultural production to fall to only 25% of last year's total.
Previously, more than half of Albania's work force was employed on cooperative and state farms. The full collectivisation of agriculture after 1956 and the introduction of mechanisation led to improved yields and increased output, aided also by irrigation, terracing and the doubling of land area under cultivation. The country was then self-sufficient in food.
However, by the 1980s agricultural output was growing at a lower rate than population. A drive to increase agricultural exports aggravated the bad domestic supply situation, as did a drought in 1989-90. In response, the government began livestock imports and allowed a certain degree of liberalisation.
When the Socialist Party government allowed families the use of cooperative land and stock in early 1991, the theft of crops from collective farms became so widespread that in many districts cooperative holdings were simply divided without waiting for official permission.
Legislation under which all holdings and 40% of cooperative lands were to be distributed among villagers on the basis of family size was adopted last year. However, no account was taken of essential features of efficient cereals production, in particular mechanisation (most cooperative machinery anyway dated back to the 1960s), and the free supply of fertilisers was stopped.
The first Socialist government redrafted the constitution, renamed the Peoples Socialist Republic the Republic of Albania, abandoned official Marxism-Leninism and introduced the right to private property ownership.
But the reforms proved insufficient. The three-month-old Socialist Party government fell after a month-long strike headed by the powerful miners' union had crippled the economy, and Alia brought the Democrats into a coalition "government of stability" headed by Prime Minister Ylli Bufi. Democrat Gramoz Pashko became deputy prime minister with responsibility for the economy, while other Democrats filled the economic portfolios.
The new government appealed for foreign aid, devalued the currency, staples and closed "unproductive" factories. Pashko's plan included the privatisation of all cooperative land and the privatisation of 25,000 state enterprises, threatening to make 15% of the work force redundant as a result of closures.
Exploration contracts for offshore oil and gas reserves were negotiated with Deminex of Germany, OMV of Austria and Chevron and Occidental Petroleum from the United States. Negotiations were opened too with Samancor of South Africa for the mining of chrome ore.
The economic program made little headway in easing the lot of the hard-pressed population, and promised EC food aid also failed to improve the food supply. Unemployment passed 30%.
The Democrats withdrew from the government in December, claiming the Socialists were attempting to destabilise the country in the hope of halting the reforms.
Very little now functions, and workers stand idle, deprived of tools and raw materials and often with little reason for working. They can now anticipate a further dose of harsh economic measures.
The elections were watched closely in neighbouring Kosovo province, still under the domination of the Serbian regime. Young Albanian intellectuals from Kosovo reportedly play an important role in the Democratic Party. If the borders of the former Yugoslavia are altered, the annexation of Kosovo to Albania is one option about which the Albanian parties are said to agree.