TIRANA, May 18 – The leading elections monitoring body in Europe has officially opened its mission in Albania ahead of the June 21 local administrative elections, stressing the need to have a process that gains the voters’ trust and meets international standards.
OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has officially launched its mission led by Ambassador Audrey Glover, who said this week the mission is interested only in the process, not the result.
Glover added it is very important for Albanians to have trust in the integrity of the electoral process.
“For that to happen, voters must be able to make a real and informed choice regarding the different candidates and that these candidates have the opportunity to campaign in a leveled field,” Ambassador Glover said.
Speaking at a press conference in downtown Tirana on Friday, Glover added the electoral process goes beyond voting day.
“The elections are not something that happens only on election day but also what happens before and after,” Ambassador Glover said.
Albanian voters will elect 61 new mayors to run municipalities across Albania and the members of the local municipal councils.
The new municipalities are much larger and more powerful than those in the previous elections due to a territorial reform that merged all rural municipalities with the neighboring cities and towns.
Ambassador Glover leads a core team of 13 experts based in Tirana and 18 long-term observers to be deployed in teams of two across the country.
In addition, ODIHR will request 250 short-term observers to monitor proceedings on election day.
The mission will observe the elections for their compliance with OSCE commitments, other international obligations and standards for democratic elections and with national legislation.
Ambassador Glover has a long history of missions to Albania, including leading the ODIHR mission during the 2013 general elections. Her presence then was opposed by the Democrats’ leader and then Prime Minister Sali Berisha in 2013 over fears she would be biased because Glover led the monitoring mission in 1996, in elections widely believed to have been rigged by Berisha.
Glover said this week at the press conference that she had received no official complaints over her leadership of the mission.
Observers will closely monitor the candidate and voter registration, campaign activities, the work of the election administration and relevant governmental bodies, election-related legislation and its implementation, the media environment and the resolution of election-related disputes. As part of the observation, the mission will also monitor the media coverage of the campaign.
In the course of its observation, the mission will meet with representatives from state authorities, political parties and candidates, and with representatives from civil society, the media, and the international community.
On election day, observers will monitor the opening of polling stations, voting, the counting of ballots and the tabulation of results.
For election day, the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission will join efforts with a delegation from the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.
A statement of preliminary findings and conclusions will be issued on the day after the election. A final report on the observation of the entire electoral process will be published approximately two months after the completion of the electoral process.
