As the elections’ results saga continues, containing any further damage to the country’s interests means a timely solution must be found.
By Andi Balla
The local elections’ results saga continues in Albania two weeks after voters went to the polls. That’s particularly the case for the Tirana mayoral elections, the country’s most important race in these elections.
It seems it is now up to the courts to decide who will be the next chief executive at Tirana City Hall. Albania’s electoral college, a panel of judges selected to deal with the dispute of election results, will have to decide on the winner after the official results by the Central Elections Commission overturned a preliminary count and declared Democratic Party candidate Lulzim Basha a winner over incumbent mayor and Socialist Party leader Edi Rama. The Socialists appealed the result in court, claiming the CEC acted illegally in recalculating the results.
Everybody agrees on one thing: The election results in Tirana were extremely tight. Rama says he won by a mere 10 votes (out of more than 100,000), while Basha says he has won, after CEC officially declared him the winner by about 80 votes. The change in the results came after the CEC decided to include in the results and counted votes that had been previously declared invalid because they were cast on the wrong boxes. (There were separate boxes for mayor and city council selection, sporting different color ballots, but some voters still managed to confuse the two.)
Both sides say the will of the voters must be done. However, in typical Albanian politician’s fashion, both interpret that will according to their own benefit.
The judges of the electoral college now face a major challenge – they need to decide whether the electoral process, from beginning to end, was based on the letter of the law. In a country where mistrust runs deep, the electoral college will need to interpret the law strictly, leaving no avenue for dispute. The other challenge will be to see whether the parties accept that decision.
Achieving a consensus between the two parties is another element that could end the deadlock, but Albanian voters need to know whether the electoral process was done according to the set rules. And they need to know quickly without anymore delays.
Following the proper appeals system is also important, and it is a positive sign the Socialist Party is, for now, officially following these legal procedures instead of relying on street protests, which have a heavy toll on perceptions about the country while appearing to have no effect on the central government or institutions like the CEC.
Even though most of these protests have been civilized, all it takes is a few burning tires and blocking highways, and before you know it, 30 percent of foreign tourists cancel their reservations to the Albanian coast. That figure was released this week by a major Albanian tourist association and is only the tip of the iceberg.
Officials, whether electoral college judges or party leaders, need to work on a fast legal solution out of this new deadlock that just creates more instability in a country that can ill afford any type of instability right now. And everyone should accept the decisions of the courts, even if they are not in their favor.
The sad truth is that even if those involved in a solution act swiftly, and a satisfactory decision for all is reached, a lot of damage has already been done in terms of Albanians’ trust in elections, Albania’s move toward the European Union and the country’s economic grown through harm to the vital tourism sector. Any further delays, will simply makes things worse for ordinary Albanians.
