TIRANA, June 4 – Albanian political parties and election officials continue to face pressure to remove mayoral candidates with alleged criminal pasts from the ballots.
International representatives said problematic candidates remained on the ballots even after the deadline for registration had passed and some last minute replacements were made.
The Democratic Party withdrew its candidate in the southern Kelcyra municipality, though there was some confusion as the Democrats had not issued an official statement.
Democratic Party sources told local media they did not know Gentian Muhamedi had a criminal past before reports surfaced that an Italian court had sentenced him for being part of a prostitution ring in the late 1990s.
The candidate denied the claims and said he had a clean record.
The Democrats also sought to replace their candidate in Kurbin, but the case has been left pending and still under discussion at the Central Elections Commission.
The Democrats said they are aware of candidates with problematic pasts in the Socialist-led coalition’s ranks as well, and called on the Socialists to follow their example to remove candidates with criminal links or convictions.
The elections are seen as a key test for the political parties to clean their ranks from people who usually are wealthy and influential but are suspected of committing crimes to get to that position.
Through a post on social network Twitter, the U.S. Embassy said it applauded “DP’s bold move and steps taken by other parties on decriminalization.” It added the U.S. “supports continued efforts to clean up politics in Albania.”
At the end of April, just before the registration deadline for candidates, U.S. Ambassador Donald Lu said the embassy had identified some candidates with possible criminal history, and was “discussing their cases with political leaders.”
A few weeks later, in an interview with an Albanian magazine he said some of these names were removed, and he hoped more would be removed, but without giving further details.
Lu met with Central Election Committee head Lefterije Luzi this week, and sources in the meeting told local media decriminalization and the role of CEC in it was discussed.
Cleaning the lists of candidates from persons with an alleged criminal involvement or past has been key to the calls from the international community before the elections. They also warned they would make public such names if the parties persisted, but no one has been named so far.
On Tuesday, Lu met with Luzi also to formally see the preparations for the polls. The U.S. embassy is involved with some projects directly linked with the elections process and monitoring.
