TIRANA, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Albania's Socialist Party (SP)has won a landslide victory in the general elections on Sunday.
The ruling Socialists of Prime Minister Edi Rama have garnered about 48 percent of the votes which are translated in 74 mandates in the 140-seat parliament, the Central Election Commission confirmed Tuesday when 97 percent of votes were counted.
The party made a historic triumph in the election, coming first in 11 of the 12 election zones of Albania.
The opposition Democratic Party chaired by Lulzim Basha won 29 percent or 43 seats and the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI) which co-ruled with SP in the last four years secured 19 seats.
The landslide victory gives Rama the chance to form his government alone since only 71 seats are needed for the formation of a new government.
Actually, this was his main call during the electoral campaign. Rama asked Albanian citizens to give his party +71 votes, vowing to achieve the opening of negotiations talks with EU within this year.
Rama who is set to serve another four-year term in office has also pledged to "clean" Albania's justice system from all corrupt judges and prosecutors while he has promised to give a boost to country's economy.
Now he will have the parliamentary majority, it seems that there will be no obstacles for him to realize more projects. However, the projected revisions to judicial reforms agreed with the EU could be delayed since such amendments require 84 votes to pass in parliament.
At the same time, this has been the biggest defeat of the Democratic Party since its establishment.
Many voices within the DP have sought the resignation of their leader Basha, blaming him for such big defeat even in DP's main strongholds.
Prominent DP figure Besnik Mustafaj on Monday called on Basha to resign.
"It is not the first time that we Democrats lost an election in the past 26 years, but this one was a shameful defeat," local media cited Mustafaj as saying.
He also urged Basha to hold elections for a new party leader.
Dozens of citizens entered DP's headquarters yard on Tuesday morning, asking for Basha to leave.
It remains to be seen what will happen in the largest opposition party as so far there has been no official statement by Basha or other members of party leadership.
Meanwhile, the SMI didn't receive the expected results. Its current chairman Petrit Vasili had a press conference Tuesday morning where he made clear SMI's position after these elections. He said SMI would be Albania's opposition in the upcoming four years while he noted that it would a strong voice representing about 220,000 citizens who voted for SMI but also Albanian citizens in general.
