TIRANA: Albanian police clashed with opposition supporters who tried to force their way into parliament to disrupt a vote on the appointment of an interim prosecutor general on Monday.

Around 3,000 demonstrators, holding EU and US flags and shouting anti-government slogans, gathered outside parliament to condemn the selection of a temporary prosecutor general which they say is unconstitutional.

Riot police pushed back the protesters after they broke through a first security cordon outside parliament. The demonstrators threw smoke bombs toward officers. Local media reported that several people have been injured.

Opposition lawmakers also threw smoke bombs inside parliament, but governing legislators managed to hold the vote and elect Arta Marku as acting chief prosecutor with 69 votes from the ruling Socialist party. Two lawmakers voted against the appointment and two others abstained, while the opposition boycotted the vote.

Marku’s brief swearing-in ceremony after the vote was held under a cloud of smoke as well.

“This is the beginning of the popular uprising,” main opposition Democratic Party lea­der Lulzim Basha said before ending the protest but without explaining how it would continue.

Following a meeting with opposition counterparts, Basha said that in the first weeks of January they would hold a big protest and other nationwide protests “while we take the proper political steps at the parliament too.” Basha’s predecessor in the post, Sali Berisha, who is also an Albanian ex-president and prime minister, mentioned “extermination of the lawmakers’ mandates which means no lawmaker will be a lawmaker anymore.” He didn’t make clear, however, how would that be done and what it will mean in practice.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2017