Albanian President Ilir Meta rejected the results of municipal elections held last Sunday and said the only true elections will be those scheduled on October 13, the date he announced after he annulled the scheduled June 30 elections, which went ahead anyway.
The June 30 elections were held after the leader of the socialist majority, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, called the decision to annul “an open violation of the constitution”, a position which was also confirmed by the country’s electoral college.
The June 30 elections took place without the participation of the centre-right opposition led by Lulzin Basha, who boycotted the vote.
Meta spoke on Tuesday of “shame and scandal”, and accused the majority of vote rigging.
Meta surprised people when he said that last Sunday “Albanians avoided a trap and a conspiracy, aimed at bringing the country towards a civil conflict”.
He said the conspiracy aims at creating a “state within a state” and that behind it are the multi-billionaire George Soros and his family.
Meta also lashed out at the international community and its diplomatic representatives in Tirana, which supported the June 30 elections, in particular the United States and the European Union.
He called on diplomats “to not become ridiculous and not play with our constitution”.
Meta believes the country’s current political crisis is due to Rama as well as “those who support him in the way of conflict and in the de facto constitution of a junta that has annihilated every principle of the rule of law, that calls for erasing every institution and derailing Albania from its course of European integration”.
