POWER continued to ebb from President Sali Berisha yesterday as his rival, Mr Fatos Nano, emerged from hiding and four years in prison to give a convincing performance as a leader in waiting.
The contrast with Mr Berisha could not have been more stark. The widely despised president is sheltering in his palace on the hill overlooking Tirana, guarded night and day by machine gun toting troops and secret police and has all but disappeared from public view.
The headquarters of the Socialist Party - which changed its name from the Communist Party in 1991 - was awash yesterday morning with a crowd of earnest faces pressings against the grates.
Inside the building, there was a scene as if time had shifted to the court of an Ottoman sultan waiting rooms packed with courtiers, supplicants, hangers on, cigarette smoke curling in the light from a window.
A small knot of men discussed some complexity, their conversation suddenly boiling up in a riot of gestures and scowls. Then as suddenly they calmed down and smoked their cigarettes.
Mr Nano was in a small meeting room, a round, genial face with a close cropped beard; his manner imposes calm, he has fluent English and a large, Buddha like stomach. The acting prime minister, Mr Basfrkim Fino, was in the room but all activity centred on Mr Nano. He is the man who has power in his belly.
He had been released from Tirana prison last week after four years in Mr Berisha's jails - "a place where if you became scared you just could not survive" - by the director of the Albanian prison service, Mr Bedri Coku.
Mr Nano told the story with a wry smile: "All the other prisoners came to my cell and broke down the door because they did not want to leave without Fatos Nano. I was held hostage for around 20 hours. Eventually, they walked out of the prison and no one shot them. I did not want to break the law because officially we were criminals and I waited until someone with authority came. The prison director came and said: `What are you doing here?' and then he drove me home.
A reporter asked: "Have you been home since then."
He replied: "I've been in many homes," an allusion to the fear that oppresses many opponents of Mr Berisha, who have found it necessary to move from house to house for fear of his newly created "Special Police". One opposition journalist said yesterday: "We are very concerned that Berisha is developing a parallel structure of power, by creating the Special Police. He is still very powerful."
Mr Nano, the leader of the Socialist Party, and, briefly Albania's interim prime minister in 1991 after the rebellion against the Communist dictatorship, sent a pacifying message to the Albanian public: "I want to convert my party into a peace making and peace keeping force."
Mr Nano stressed his support for the Government of Reconciliation, and took care to distance himself from the culture of individualistic political leadership. "I am from the south," he said "but my best friends are in the north. The unity of our country does not depend solely on one man, either Berisha or Nano."
Asked whether he would meet Mr Berisha, he said: "I will shake hands with him, not as president, but as an Albanian citizen. He should not step down, but aside" - an elegant distinction which allows Mr Berisha a little dignity.
Perhaps the most impressive moment of the day was an aside at a later press conference when Mr Nano's interpreter fluffed a sentence, making a positive a negative. The ex-prisoner stepped in gently: "You're too emotional today. Calm down" - a message that all of Albania would do well to heed.
Ron Popeski adds:
A high level European assessment team arrived in Tirana yesterday for two days of talks on how to help the new broad based government end the anarchy.
The 11 strong team, led by the Dutch roving ambassador, Count Jan de Marchant et d'Ansembourg, arrived from the southern, Italian port of Brindisi and immediately went into talks with the Prime Minister, Mr Fino.