By HENRI CILI
The process of the issuing of ID Cards has become the Number One potential risk to the 28 June elections. In this sense we should be “affirming” the alarm raised by the Opposition regarding the issue of electoral standards and ID Cards. Three months prior to Eday, there is clear evidence of the fact that a substantial number of citizens will not be able to acquire the basic document needed to vote on Eday. Today, it is sufficient to list several facts to comprehend why the problem of ID Cards bears the potential danger of devaluation of the process of free and fair elections of 28 June.
First, the fact that this process was left for the last six months of this term of the government, even less than six months before Eday, when it could have been done at the beginning or in the middle of the term of the Democrats in office, is now broadly accepted as suspicious. A government with the best of good will had more than sufficient time to complete this process on time.
Second, when it became obvious that three million Albanians could not be issued with ID cards within six months, targets began to diminish: new instructions were issued that only those citizens who did not have passports should apply for ID cards, meaning 730 thousand people.
Third, it appears that now it is not even technically possible to issue citizens without passports with ID cards on time.
Four, it appears that a series of government proposals to reduce the price of the ID card for given catagories of society who do not have any other valid document with which to vote, is not helping either.
Five, the Government has every obligation and possibility to do its utmost to encourage the process of issuing ID cards to all citizens without passports, and not just by making it free of charge for those who apply up until the elections. The other parallel penalizing or encouraging measures are by no means superfluous either. For example, within a deadline of say, the first to the fifteenth of May, severe penalities could be imposed for all those who do not apply for and acquire cards: wages or pensions are not paid out, power or phone bills cannot be paid, bank processes cannot be conducted, or other such methods,wherever the citizen must use ID. Only in this way, using means of instigation and penalities can, at least the essential bulk of this 739 thousand citizens without passports be issued ID cards.
The public and international pressure on the government as regards these problems, constitutes the only solution to this crisis, which could endanger the success of these elections this time round because of the ID cards. The way this issue has been treated so lightly resembles those moments of a society, when a major hazard is surpassed without attracting any great attention, when everyone looks after his own backyard and nothing further.
The failure of this year’s electoral process, irrespective of the reasons, the culprits etc., is an enormous minus for the future of this country. Perhaps this is a “penalty” the socialists deserve because of the fact that for eight years on end they failed to do the ID cards, for eight years on end, they once stole the results of the elections through lists, another time through the CEC and yet another time via the Constitutional Court, and in all this mess many Demcrats think that “it deserves them right”, but, in the final account Albania does not deserve a failed electoral process.
Together with all the enthusiasm of Albania’s membership to NATO, it is better that we say “YES” to the alarm sounded by the Opposition over the danger we face. At the end of the day, it is better we have a premature false alarm rather than an alrm when it is too late to act. Prophylactic measures instead of a remedy.
