Today: Jun 13, 2025

Albania Pending

3 mins read
16 years ago
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Almost a month after the general elections, there is no official final result. We are daily following an unending, contested electoral process. Throughout this continuous saddening spectacle of complaints, commissions and commissioners, electoral college, and parties, two things are clear. First, the Socialist Party has lost the chance to govern. Second, Albania’s old political culture continues to govern.

Despite the fact that there is no official final result, despite the unfinished consideration of all of the SP and G99 complaints, it is clear that the SP will not rule Albania for the next four years. Even though the Socialists won a ninth mandate in Fier, after filing for the recounting of votes, its complaint for Berat was rejected by the Electoral College. The grounds for the rejection are lack of legal evidence of irregularities, for instance, the lack of remarks by local commissioners in Berat during the counting process. The same answer is expected to be given for the cases of Shkodra and Tirana, since the essence of the complaints is the same. Arguments of (il)legality seem to be going round in circles with the SP and G99 contending that if two Central Election Commission members ask for the recount of ballots, the CEC is obliged to do so based on the Electoral Code, and the DP contending that that would indeed be the case for specific ballots for which irregularities have been identified on the spot by local commissioners.

Beyond the circularity of legal arguments, however, indicating loopholes of the legislative framework of elections, or the lack of a well-agreed interpretation of the law, it remains that the SP has lost. Even if all its complaints are accepted, the Socialists will still not have a majority of mandates to rule. The Socialist contestation of the elections then seems to be ‘for the sake of standards’. Much is also being debated about the centrality of the ‘standards’ argument to the internal party power struggle. The impact of these elections on the future and leadership of the SP will continue to unfold and will be the subject of much debate to come. In the meantime, what has emerged from the SP insistence on not recognising the electoral process is the failure of Albanian political culture to mature.

The prologue to these elections seemed to indicate that a new culture of consensus and trust was coming of age. This is what the SP-DP consensus on the Electoral Code and election infrastructure seemed to indicate. After all, the rules of game were endorsed by the country’s main parties, the SP and DP. And despite the many issues that can be found with the electoral system that was created, it was a basis of mutual trust that could have made it work.

In particular when this dragging counting process began, all that turned sour. The old culture of mistrust continues to prevail, showing that the old Albanian political way is much more resilient than had been hoped. Albania’s fundamental democratic credentials are hard to be seen by Albanians themselves as well as by the international community. The failure to signal democratic maturity by holding uncontested elections up to international standards is a detriment to the country’s aspirations as can already be evidenced by the absence of Albania in Commissioner Olli Rehn’s agenda of meetings in the Balkans.

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