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| - Albanians streamed into polling stations on Sunday to elect a new parliament after weeks of bitter campaigning that saw candidates trading insults and one party supporter killed in a gunfight. Officials said the election day -- closely monitored by European and American ambassadors -- passed off without major concerns, as candidates dialled down their rhetoric. The vote is seen as crucial to Albania's hopes of joining the European Union, all parties promising to push forward with the formal membership process and carry out reforms demanded by the bloc. Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama went into the vote seeking a third term against a dozen parties united behind the main opposition Democrats, led by his long-time rival Lulzim Basha. The voting process was "calm and carried out with integrity", said election commission chief Ilirjan Celibashi after the polls closed at 1700 GMT, calling on the parties to observe the same calm during the count. Official results could take two days to be published, with pre-election polls giving Rama's Socialists the edge. But many voters are jaded with a political culture where each side routinely accuses the other of cheating and corruption. "Democracy is good, I don't blame democracy, but I do blame the political class -- it fights only for itself, never for us," Kosta Ranxha, an 80-year-old retiree, told AFP. The country of 2.8 million people is among the poorest in Europe and the coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse, with the vital tourism sector suffering a huge slump. Rama, an artist and former basketball player, banked on a mass vaccination campaign to boost his popularity and has promised that 500,000 Albanians will be inoculated by the end of May. He has also vowed to increase tourism and repair damage from a 2019 quake that left thousands without homes. Democrat leader Lulzim Basha has promised to speed up the push for EU membership and revive the economy with help for small businesses. The two men traded barbs throughout the campaign, with Basha accusing his rival of vote-rigging and corruption and Rama belittling his opponent as a puppet of party veterans and President Ilir Meta. In the run-up to the vote, the president, an arch-enemy of Rama whose wife runs a smaller party allied to the Democrats, said "pitchforks" would be ready on Sunday in case the Socialists attempted to tamper with the votes. US envoy Yuri Kim called the comments unacceptable, writing on Twitter: "These threats deserve condemnation." She was among several diplomats officially monitoring the electoral process, stressing that the US did not support any party and asking all candidates "to accept the judgement of voters when the count is finalised". The rivalry between the two parties turned deadly in the final week of the campaign when a row over alleged vote-buying descended into a gunfight in a city near the capital. One Socialist supporter was killed and four other people injured, prompting both the EU and US to call for a speedy investigation. Earlier, the OSCE, an international body that sent monitors for the vote, called the election a vital measure of "national political maturity". But many Albanians feel that time is running out for politicians to deliver on their promises. "We don't want young people to leave, we want them to stay here but we need more job opportunities," Berti Jusufaj, 50, told AFP at a polling station in Tirana, drawing attention to the hundreds of thousands of Albanians living elsewhere in Europe or the US. "We are tired, young people study and train to find work, promises follow and then we get nothing," added Mariela Sherrja, 26, a finance expert. bme-jxb/har
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