IDs remain top political issue

TIRANA, May 6 – The Albanian government said the Identity Card process of deliverance to the country’s citizens was being speed up considerably and likely all that desire to participate in the upcoming June parliamentary elections with new IDs will be able to do so.
The government insists that the process is on time.
At the same time the Ministry of the Interior exploited all of their tools to call on people to rush and apply for the new IDs. SMS messages were sent to all people to remind them.
The Ministry of Finance ordered the post offices around the country to sell the application forms for only 200 lek as subscribed by the government last week.
At the same time the opposition Socialist party called on all the people to rush to get the new IDs and continued its accusation that the government would use that as a tool to manipulate the June 28th vote.
The government says everything is on time to make the non-passports holders, some 730,000 people, attain the IDs so that they can vote.
The opposition insists the process is failing in many areas and also add they have a different figure for the non-passport holders taking it up to 960,000.
Voters lists have always been a main shortcoming for the elections in post-communist Albania.