Tirana, Albania - Albanian elections authorities announced no official or partial results Monday morning, more than 12 hours after voting ended for the country's new parliament and amid a dramatically close ballot count. The ballot counting was progressing "normally," though only after starting with hours of delay in some parts of the country, election commission spokesman Leonard Olli said. There was also no turnout figure, though it appeared to have been surprisingly low.
Exit polls on Sunday night predicted an outright victory or at least a comfortable lead for the bloc led by conservative Prime Minister Sali Berisha's Democratic Party, leading to countrywide street celebrations by his supporters.
But an online display showing a minute-by-minute result of the ballots counted shows a dramatically close race of the Democrats and their main rivals, the coalition led by Tirana Mayor Edi Rama's Socialist Party. Neither Berisha nor Rama has claimed victory yet.
At 10 am (0800 GMT), with roughly 16-17 per cent of the ballots counted, Berisha's Democrats led the Socialists 46.32 to 45.87 per cent. The third-largest party is the Socialist Alliance for Integration with 5.85 per cent.
Sunday's election - following a series of chaotic, violent polls over the past two decades since multi-party democracy replaced a harsh Communist regime - was crucial for Albania's bid to join the European Union.
Voting ended without major incidents, though the campaign was marred by deadly violence on two occasions and concern over administrative obstacles faced by more than 250,000 out of the 3 million registered voters.
An Albanian elction monitoring mission by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was scheduled to present its preliminary report on the vote later Monday.
