Albania Reformers Admit Defeat but Vow to Fight On : Elections: The ruling Communists’ victory threatens to spark a new exodus and more unrest.

The meteoric rise of opposition reformers and the hopes they engendered for escape from repression fizzled Monday as the Democratic Party conceded that it has failed to wrest power from Albania’s ruling Communists.

A sweeping victory by the Albanian Party of Labor, which has wielded totalitarian power for 46 years, has instilled fears of another exodus and escalating unrest in this tormented and deeply divided society.

Opposition leaders bemoaned the outcome of Sunday’s first-ever multi-party election as a devastating blow to those seeking to help Albania shed its Stalinist shell. They blamed the result on the ruling party’s monopoly and manipulation of vital resources such as media and transport.

But Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha vowed that democracy would eventually triumph and warned that a simmering discontent spawned by grinding poverty would drive out the Communists in a matter of weeks.

Official returns showed that the fledgling Democratic Party captured 72 of 250 parliamentary seats in Sunday’s balloting, which was the first challenge mounted against the Communists since they took power after World War II.

The opposition, formed only three months ago, captured more than 60% of the vote in the capital, winning 17 of 18 constituencies, including dramatic upsets of Communist President Ramiz Alia and Foreign Minister Muhamet Kapliani.

Since there are no provisions in the draft constitution preventing nomination of a president from outside the People’s Assembly, it appeared likely that the reelected Communist deputies will propose Alia as head of state.

Berisha indicated that his party is resigned to accepting the Communists’ choice and said the Democrats will not nominate a contender.

However, he rejected the Communists’ suggestion of a coalition government, vowing to continue the struggle for democracy through peaceful opposition.

Democrats won by huge margins in industrial cities such as Elbasan, Kavaje, Vlora and the port of Durres, and the election--deemed by foreign monitors to have been as fair as could be expected--has brought an end to one-party dictatorship on the Continent of Europe.

But the ruling party’s predominance in the remote and backward mountain villages appeared likely to give the Communists a two-thirds majority in the Assembly. That will make it virtually impossible for the pro-Western opposition to push through its proposals for a market economy and greater individual liberties.

Returns from rural areas were still being tabulated late Monday, but the Communists had 66% with most of the votes counted, and only about a dozen seats were expected to require a runoff next Sunday.

The results reflected a potentially destabilizing split between cities and the countryside, with workers and intellectuals in the urban areas favoring radical reform while the 60% of Albanians who make up the peasantry cling fearfully to the authoritarian regime they’ve always known.

A similar divide between the pro-Communist countryside and opposition city dwellers opened up in Bulgaria after elections there last June, feeding a wave of anti-government demonstrations in Sofia that brought down the elected Socialist government after five months.

Many predict a comparable scenario in Albania, but the divisions here are much sharper. Where Bulgaria’s leadership let opposition supporters demonstrate with impunity, Albania’s hard-line Communists have called in tanks and troops to quell unrest.

As dissatisfaction escalates, so will the potential for violence.

In anticipation of the elections, Albanians recently settled down to a dejected calm after months of anti-Communist demonstrations and rioting in major cities to protest appalling living conditions that are the legacy of dictatorial rule. Tens of thousands have fled since last July, having despaired of any chance for a livable future.

Opposition figures worried privately after their defeat that disappointed supporters--especially the young and educated--would again vote with their feet and flee Albania once the scope of the Communists’ victory becomes clear.

“In the name of the nation, be patient,” a visibly disappointed Berisha appealed to supporters.

Alia, who won only 36% of the vote for his parliamentary seat against a virtually unknown Tirana geologist, made no public appearances Monday.

The manager of his (Communist) Party of Labor, Xhelil Ghoni, came forward to take a bow for the party and to confirm that Albania’s leadership will cling to the embattled ideology of the late Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha.

Ghoni noted that Communists won a majority of the Assembly seats and that even in the urban areas that elected opposition deputies, the ruling party collected between 30% and 40% of the vote.

“This once more proved that the Party of Labor, with Comrade Ramiz Alia at the head, is the main political party in the country and enjoys the faith of most of the people,” Ghoni said, drawing thunderous applause at a press conference from the Communist sycophants who dominate the state-run media.

The 250 parliamentary deputies will be charged with naming a new president and Cabinet, as well as drafting a constitution to incorporate promised reforms.

While acknowledging their short-term defeat, the Democrats warned that Albania’s desperate circumstances and long-practiced isolation would soon turn the population against its rulers.

“Yesterday was not a Democratic victory, but it was a victory for democracy,” said Gramoz Pashko, a prominent economist who had been expected to be named prime minister had the Democrats won. “The Communists who sucked our blood for 46 years are finished, and in two months they will be in pieces.”

Despite its colossal victory, the Party of Labor is known to be badly split between those who support modest reforms and the hard-liners who feel that Alia’s limited concessions to democracy last year led to the erosion of the party’s absolute control.

Alia announced some relaxation of travel and trade restrictions last year after a severe drought and a drop in industrial production worsened conditions already deemed the most destitute in Europe.

Sunday’s election, the first since a failed attempt at pluralism in the 1920s, was called by the Communists under pressure of widespread unrest resulting from food shortages and growing unemployment.

Those conditions have prompted nearly 100,000 Albanians to leave this country of 3.3 million over the past year.

Opposition figures and Western diplomats predict that foreign aid will be slow in coming to Albania as long as a Communist government is in power, and without loans and investment the economy will only get worse.

“No Western government is ready to assist a neo-Communist regime,” Berisha observed.

An American congressional delegation that visited Tirana last week delivered the message that without reform of what remains Europe’s most repressed society, no U.S. assistance could be counted on. Three Republicans in the delegation directly tied American help to a change in government.