Albania votes as PM Rama seeks fourth term, promising EU integration

By Fatos Bytyci and Edward McAllister

TIRANA (Reuters) -Albanians started voting in parliamentary elections on Sunday with prime minister Edi Rama seeking an unprecedented fourth term in office after a campaign dominated by promises to join the European Union and accusations of widespread graft.

Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) and will close at 7 p.m. Results are expected on Monday and exit polls will be released after ballot boxes are sealed on Sunday.

Rama, in power as head of the Socialist Party (PS) since 2013, is favourite to win against his old rival, former prime minister Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party (PD), bolstered in part by an influential network built over 12 years in power, a recent period of healthy economic growth and a largely popular image abroad.

But opposition to Rama has intensified in the past year over a perceived crackdown on the opposition, including Berisha, while Rama weathered a series of scandals of his own. These include the arrest of his ally, the mayor of Tirana Erion Veliaj, this year on allegations of corruption and money laundering.

Veliaj and Berisha deny wrongdoing.

Rama has spent the last week reiterating his promise to join the EU by the end of the decade, although some experts doubt that timeline will be possible given the reforms required to join the bloc, including eradicating graft.

"Today the Albanian people will decide to push very strongly forward and to give us all the strength we need to make Albania the next European member state," Rama told reporters outside a polling station after casting his vote.

Berisha also backs Albania's EU aspirations and has promised to fight corruption and increase wages.

"It's going to be a new summer day for Albanians," Berisha told Reuters after voting. "Vote, vote, vote."

Opinion polls show Rama winning up to 50% of the vote and Berisha up to 35%. Rama may need help from smaller parties to maintain a slim four-seat majority in the 140-seat house.

Many young voters especially are tired of the likes of Berisha and Rama who have run the country in various roles since the fall of communism in 1990. They point to Albania's stark income inequality that sees many people drive expensive Range Rovers around the capital Tirana while others live in cramped Soviet-era housing.

“I will vote for new politicians because those like Rama and Berisha have been here for three decades and they only replace themselves,” said Arber Qazimi, 21.

An economics student called Erisa said she would not even vote and was instead looking for a way to join the hundreds of thousands of Albanians who have emigrated over the past decade, many of them to nearby EU countries.

Others voted for something new. 

"We want to see changes to stop youth from going out of the country," said Elson Toska, 37, after voting. "The future is not Europe, to go and work there. We have our own country."

By some measures, Rama has done well. Annual economic growth above 4% for 2022-2024, driven by trade with the EU and a tourism boom, outstripped other Balkan countries, the World Bank says.

But corruption remains a huge problem, experts say, driven by criminal gangs who make billions of euros from drugs and weapons trafficking overseas and bring it back to Albania to be laundered.

(Reporting by Edward McAllister and Fatos Bytyci; Writing by Edward McAllister and Renee Maltezou; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)