Politician against voting from Albania immigrants

TIRANA, Oct 20 – Dashamir Shehi of the National Development Movement party and a former deputy premier during the first term of the governing Democratic party, was against including immigrants in the next year’s general elections.
Shehi said in an interview to a private television station that Albania itself is suffering from the bad organization and holding of the elections during the post-communist period.
That means that the embassies will be hardly considered as impartial institutions to hold the voting.
Besides he also added that some 100,000-150,000 voters are only in neighboring Greece and they could turn into a tool from the neighboring country to become a decision-taking political tool in Albania.
He mentioned the fact that many of these Albanian immigrants have already changed their names to Christian ones in order to find jobs in Greece. That means they may be easily influenced and be brought to vote for what Greece would like to. That has been proved in all the last voting processes in the Himara town in southwestern Albania.
Elections in post-communist Albania have always been a shortcoming for the country’s integration efforts into the international institutions.
Europe and NATO have made it clear that holding polls next year in a free and fair way is fundamental to future membership in those institutions.