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| - Albanians go to the polls on Sunday facing a choice between a long-serving prime minister and one of his fiercest critics now backed by a united opposition, with the current president also working to undercut the incumbent. Here are the three key players, who share a very public enmity: Leftist Prime Minister Edi Rama -- a former basketball player who went to art school in Paris -- will have much to tackle if he gains a third term in office on Sunday. He is promising to "defeat the pandemic", repair damage from a 2019 deadly earthquake, finish major road and airport projects, complete institutional reforms and bring the country closer to EU membership. The 56-year-old is also still a keen artist, hanging many of his works on the walls of his office and holding occasional international exhibitions. Rama cut his political teeth in student protests against a communist regime that had kept Albania in isolation for more than four decades. He took over at the helm of the Socialist Party in 2005 in the middle of an 11-year stint as mayor of the capital Tirana, eventually becoming prime minister in 2013. His right-wing opponents regularly accuse him of links with organised crime, but he has said he would withdraw from political life if anyone proved links with corruption or crime. "I am not perfect but I am fighting, I want our children to have a future in Albania," he has said. Lulzim Basha, a lawyer by training, is head of the centre-right Democratic Party and a protege of veteran powerbroker Sali Berisha. Both men are implacable opponents of Rama, with Basha leading a bitter anti-government offensive during 2019, including a boycott of parliament, and street protests. The 46-year-old projects an image of a dedicated family man, his wife's social media posts revealing he likes to cook and enjoys reading to his two daughters. He claimed in a recent book that he was reading Tolstoy at the age of four. Basha, who has held several government posts and was, like Rama, mayor of Tirana, has pledged to make Albania "a European country where the law is respected". He has joined forces with about a dozen parties from across the political spectrum to boost his chances of forming a government after Sunday's vote, saying he wants to be the "guarantor of a real and efficient independence of the judicial system". A former member of the Socialist Party, President Ilir Meta quit to form his own leftist movement and has developed a deep personal enmity with Rama in recent years, accusing him of "tyranny". The 52-year-old, who served as a socialist prime minister from 1999 to 2002 and was chosen as president by a socialist-led parliament, has said he will quit his post if Rama wins "in a fair vote". He accused the socialists of trying to manipulate the result of Sunday's poll before voting had even begun. Meta, who was a weightlifter in his youth, often uses social media to profess his support for Scottish football team Glasgow Celtic, forming Albania's first supporters' club last year. His Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) has often been a kingmaker but has not tasted power since 2017, when the Socialists won enough seats to govern alone. Since then, the LSI, now led by Meta's wife Monika Kryemadhi, has allied with the centre-right opposition Democrats. Meta, who formally quit his party role when he became president, has accused the prime minister of exerting a "grip on the institutions" of the country. According to Edi Rama, Meta is the one seeking to block institutional reform. bme-ev/ljv/jxb/bp
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