What happens Sunday could affect the country's potential membership in the European Union.

TIRANA, Albania — Deep in the Balkans, two of the West's leading political operatives — John Podesta, architect of Bill Clinton's two successful campaigns for the White House, and former British prime minister Tony Blair — are going head to head in one of the strangest and most deeply fraught election campaigns in years.
At stake here for both sets of lobbyists is not only the promise of millions in consulting fees and ongoing, profitable lobbying contracts, but bragging rights as well — to having stage-managed a winning campaign involving 66 political parties bundled in at least three coalitions, and deep hatreds in all camps. So both sides — center-left Prime Minister Sali Berisha going for his third four-year term, challenged by the socialist Edi Rama — have managed to transform this electoral contest into a curious mélange of non-stop campaign rallies, caravans with blaring loudspeakers, a series of televised debates with both sides shouting at each other, and wall-to-wall television coverage that would not be out of place in Chicago or Houston. On Sunday, voters will decide.
"Mr. Podesta is a very very good man," Berisha said in a recent interview in the prime minister's office in Tirana. "I am very happy with him. He is a very serious partner. I work with (his group) with a great deal of confidence. We are thinking to work harder in public-private partnership in our country and we must invite expertise."
Edi Rama, after striking his deal with Tony Blair's organization, echoed, "We agreed that after June 23, he and his team will work with us for good governance." Meanwhile, Blair's deputy, Alastair Campbell, has set up an advisory group in Tirana as the campaign heated up.
Largely unnoticed amid the apparently revolutionary developments in Iran, this other national election in a tiny country deep within the Balkans at the far southeastern corner of Europe is deeply important to its people and its place in the world. The hope is that by staging its first clean election in a century, Albania might move one step closer to a coveted and lucrative membership in the European Union.
The fear is that it may hardly be moving in that direction at all. And all the outside forces are doing little to improve these prospects.
It's hardly surprising that Albania wants to imitate the United States in its national elections and its place in the world. Since the nation was first created by President Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I, and especially since the end of a half-century of brutal communist dictatorship in 1991, the Albanian people have lusted after America and all the United States represents. Four years ago, along with neighboring Croatia, it became the last European nation to join NATO — a decade after the other former East European communist countries. About all that won it, though, was the right to send some of its tiny military to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan where it has 221 troops.
Moreover, when the United States was seeking a sanctuary for 210 members of the one-time Iraqi terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Albania promptly raised its hand and last month, the first 14 arrived in Tirana.
All this, plus the nation's all but slavish adoration of the United States, has led Washington to see itself quite free to stick its oar into the current national contest, unashamedly, at nearly every turn. A senior State Department official, Jonathan Moore, blew into Tirana, met with all the leading contenders, then proclaimed at a news conference: "We are very concerned by what we have seen. There is a high level of political tension going into these elections … with questions and accusations on the subject of legality."
An army of outside election monitors is also descending on the country. Their reports on the outcome will play an important role in moving Albania toward EU membership. Not that this is likely to have much influence on the balloting itself, however.
The fact is that Albania's politicians can't seem to put the interests of their country ahead of their own personal lust for victory. Indeed, previous elections have led to riots, even deaths, in their aftermath. This time, with the stakes even higher, the chief observer of the Council of Europe, Italian member of Parliament Luca Volontè, put it after meeting with all the major candidates, Sali Berisha was the only one who pledged to retire gracefully if defeated.
Of course, that's easy for him to say, another monitor pointed out. As the incumbent prime minister, he controls the whole process in the first place.
David A. Andelman is the editor in chief of World Policy Journal and author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.
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