Any electoral code reform should go further than current proposals and bring back full representative democracy to Albania. It has been missing since 2009, when electoral law and constitutional changes made party leaders all-powerful in picking who gets to run for parliament.
Albania held general parliamentary elections last summer that led to a normal transfer of power from one coalition to another. The elections were largely seen as a success story, particularly in light of problems the country had faced in the past with contested election results and allegations of fraud.
This is an election-free year, so there has been little public debate about electoral process concerns that will need to be addressed ahead of administrative elections next year and general parliamentary elections in three years time. However, as international and local election experts pointed out in a roundtable event this week, now is exactly the best time for the Albanian authorities to work develop and implement changes to the country’s electoral code.
The roundtable prepared a package of recommendations aimed at improving the electoral code: the establishment of a training platform for election commissioners; the observance of electoral gender quota; the access to the right to vote by persons with disabilities; the media’s role in electoral campaigns and the financing of political parties and electoral campaigns.
The package will be sent to the parliament to consider and approve, however the package does not go far enough.
Any reform of the electoral code needs to address something more fundamental – the return a full representative democracy to.
In force since 2009, Albania’s electoral code, a regional proportional system, leaves it entirely in the hands of party leaders to select candidates for members of parliament, creating a system lacks democratic foundations and gives voters little choice but to vote for or against the will of the party leaders, who are more likely to appoint obedient rubber-stamp MPs than mavericks.
In the large parties, the system means most MPs have already been elected by virtue of being on that list, away from the middle or the bottom of the list, which makes the information on the lists obsessively coveted.
The current system’s chief architects were – not surprisingly – the leaders of the two largest parties at the time, current Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Democrats’ former leader, Sali Berisha. They orchestrated overnight constitutional changes to implement the system, leaving little room for debate of this deeply undemocratic system.
To his credit, Rama has admitted in media interviews that the changes to the constitution were “a mistake.” Yet he and his party have done nothing so far to undo the damage. In fact, there is little incentive for Rama to do so.
For the second time in four years, he and his opponent had the luxury of handpicking all the MPs. And the lists were made known to their own parties and the public at large just mere hours before a midnight deadline to submit to the Central Elections Commission their lists of candidates for members of parliament. Predictably, the lists were full of close allies to the leaders – and rich businessmen who had bankrolled the parties’ campaigns. The quality of the parliament has suffered as a result.
There was also no transparency — no discussion – about who gets to be on the list. That’s not how democracy works. As such, any future electoral reform needs to allow voters to directly pick who they want to represent them in parliament.
There are several ways of doing this – either by returning to the small electoral districts Albania had before or – if the parties want to keep the current system – full representative democracy can return by implementing credible primaries inside the parties that are run by the Central Electoral Commission, not the parties themselves.
At the end of the day, although the changes proposed by the OSCE this week are fine, any electoral code reform should go further than current proposals and bring back full representative democracy to Albania. It has been missing since 2009, when electoral law and constitutional changes made party leaders all-powerful in picking who gets to run for parliament.
– A. H. BALLA
