Albanian parliament fails to elect new president in first voting round, as main political groupings disagree on a consensus candidate.
Tirana Times
TIRANA, May 31 – Albania’s main political parties have failed to agree on a consensual candidate as parliament is set to elect the country’s next president. The first round of voting on May 30 proved fruitless after the opposition refused to agree on the ruling parties’ proposal to nominate a top judge to the post.
The second round is scheduled for June 4, and as of press time for this newspaper, consensus on a joint candidate remained elusive.
Lawmakers have a maximum five sessions to choose a successor for Bamir Topi, whose five-year term expires on July 24.
In the first three rounds, a vote of at least three-fifth, or 84 votes out of 140 seats, is required, while in the last two rounds it is enough to have a majority, or 50 percent plus one, or 71 votes. If they fail, early national elections must be held within 45 days.
Despite a very thin majority, the ruling parties can technically elect their own candidate in the third round, but domestic and international players have been pushing hard for a consensus candidate.
No first round vote as opposition rejects coalition proposal
The governing Democratic Party-led coalition’s nominee, Xhezair Zaganjori, a Constitutional Court judge, was rejected by the main opposition Socialists on May 30.
Parliament did not hold a vote, as without the Socialists’ backing it would be impossible to elect a candidate until the fourth round, when a one-vote majority is required.
The governing coalition controls 74 of parliament’s 140 seats. Topi, who could run for a second term, is not seeking re-election following disagreements with Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
The parliament held a short session with both political groupings exchanging criticism of who was to blame for the failure and what the failure meant, failure at the European Union application for the candidate status.
Both sides accused each other of trying to block the process and also the country’s progress toward the European integration.
The opposition Socialists of Edi Rama insisted that the presidential election is closely held together with the other reforms required by the European Commission.
Compromise missing
Albania’s parliament had started the procedure for the election of a new head of state on May 24, with the ruling Democrats under pressure to select a candidate based on consensus.
Candidates must have the backing of 20 lawmakers in order to be eligible in the 140-seat assembly.
Berisha said the election of the new head of state should go through a fair, transparent and negotiable process that should also involve the Socialist opposition.
The opposition fears that Democrats will pick a new head of state that will rubber-stamp party decisions and create an unprecedented concentration of power in Berisha’s hands.
Berisha declined to meet with Rama, though he met with all the other parliamentary group heads. He said that the big achievements, like the constitutional amendments, were not achieved after the personal meeting from the two political leaders but after meetings experts.
Political analysts say that was clear effort to sideline Rama, who is not a lawmaker and cannot express himself in parliament directly.
Berisha instead met three times with all his allies until they came up with Xhezair Zaganjori as a candidate. All leaders of the governing coalition said that Zaganjori is the best candidate due to his academic, judicial and diplomatic experience.
On Wednesday morning, the Democrat-led bloc in parliament proposed the Constitutional Court judge and former ambassador to replace outgoing President Bamir Topi for the next five years.
The opposition Socialist Party made clear he was unacceptable. The first-round session expired without a vote, meaning the process moved straight to a second round.
History repeating itself?
The presidential election might head in the same direction of what happened in the selection of the current president five years ago.
Topi needed four rounds to be elected and only after six opposition lawmakers broke rank with their own coalition to join the 80-member governing coalition in the vote.
This time there are slight changes in the procedure, however. The governing Democrats need just 71 votes in the fourth round while five years ago they needed 84 seats in all five rounds. They do have 71 seats this time. Now there is a fix procedure with rounds held every seven days or less and they are considered as being held even if there is no vote, like Wednesday’s.
But there is widespread call in the country and from abroad that the new president should be a consensual personality, a role Zaganjori did not fill, according to the opposition.
Gramoz Ruci of the opposition Socialists said that it is the same situation like five years ago. Then the opposition was angry that Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democrats had unofficially suggested their own candidate – Democratic Party deputy leader Bamir Topi נwithout consulting them.
The Socialists noted that, when they controlled government in 2002, they allowed the Democrats to present Alfred Moisiu as a consensus candidate, and demanded they be given the same chance.
The president is supposed to be a figure of national unity elected by consensus in parliament, but the opposition has accused the ruling Democratic Party of trying to push through the appointment of Xhezair Zaganjori without consulting it.
Since emerging in 1991 from decades of isolation and communist dictatorship, politics in the impoverished Balkan country has been marked by bitter confrontation between the two main blocs, the Socialists and the Democrats, which has slowed reform and kept Albania firmly behind Balkan neighbors in the queue to join the European Union.
Though largely a ceremonial figure, the president has the power to hold up legislation, leads the High Council of Justice in charge of the judiciary in the country and appoints the prosecutor general and the head of the Albanian secret service.
Zaganjori, the coalition’s choice
Xhezair Zaganjori is the nominee for the post of the president from the governing Democratic Party and their allies נthe Socialist Movement for Integration of Ilir Meta, the Republican Party of Fatmir Mediu and the Chams’ Unity and Justice Party of Shpetim Idrizi.
Altogether, including Meta’s lawmaker Dritan Prifti, who may break rank, and Gazmend Oketa of the New Democratic Spirit Party, who may do the same, they have 74 votes, enough to elect Zaganjori in the fourth round.
Zaganjori, 55, graduated the law faculty in 1981 and since then he has lectured on international rights, as well as European and human rights. He has also lectured at the Magistrates School and the European Studies School in Tirana.
For five years, 1992-1997, he served as ambassador in Germany. Then he worked privately as a lawyer until 2003 when he was appointed as judge at the Constitutional Court, voted by both the governing Democrats and the opposition Socialists. He also works as a member of an OSCE audit court in Vienna, Austria.
An uneasy international community
There has been unease expressed about process by representatives of the international community, including the European Union, to which Albania has applied for the candidate status, the OSCE and the United States. There have been daily meetings of ambassadors of these three main international institutions, including those of other western countries, with all the political actors in Albania.
On Tuesday, three key ambassadors, went to visit first Rama and Berisha in separate meetings.
They said clearly that finding a personality for the post of president that would be accepted by everyone is indispensable for the country’s progress.
They declined to give names mentioned during the talks. But earlier they have almost directly said that former opposition leader and Premier Fatos Nano and Democrats’ parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli were not appropriate as they were not accepted widely by the public.
Election to play EU status role
A consensual president would be a key part of the analysis EU officials will make when they decide whether to give Albania candidate status in autumn. That was said openly by the EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele when he visited Tirana earlier this month. But he also insisted that is only one part and the electoral and parliamentary reforms, and other priorities set from Brussels were fundamental in the integration process.
The EU is pressing Albania to show more democratic maturity before it makes the country an official candidate for membership, having twice turned it down in the past two years.
After opposition protests erupted into violence last year, the EU urged Albania to overhaul its electoral system before voting for a president, but parties have yet to agree how.
Last week Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, who came to Albania after it got the six-month presidency of the Parliamentary Assembly, said “it is very important to elect the President of the Republic in a cooperative way that could come out of a transparent procedure and cooperative approach between political parties in Albania.”
Dan Redford of the OSCE said Tuesday after the meetings that “What we want to see is that dialogue come to a conclusion so that we have the election of a president with the widest possible consensus in a constitutional way.”
Albania will be in a tense situation this week, and likely longer than that, until a decision on the next president is made. Though not much is public from the talks among the allies or coalitions, all eyes and ears are toward them.
