The process of electoral reform is off to a showy start with political leaders sitting on the same table despite major hostilities inter and intra coalition. Brought together by civil society and international actors the main political actors in Albania including the Prime Minister the Speaker of the Parliament and the opposition leader put forward some interesting proposals that at least in theory and ultimately if carried out in the right way would be very beneficial for the state of democracy in Albania.
First of all the issue of open lists for candidates for Member of Parliament, proposed by Ilir Meta, leader of the SMI. The present system of closed lists in a way forces the citizen to accept or deny the set choice of the party leader without the opportunity to rank the candidates according to his judgment. Citizens have expressed often their preference for open lists. In a poll carried out with a nationally representative sample of young people in 2015, 49 percent of those asked said they would prefer open lists and only 31 percent were ok with the current version of closed ones. Open lists would bring one for more opportunity for the voters to express their preference rather than notarizing that of the party leaders. Open lists would force the drafters also to carefully consider all the members of the list not only those in the winning positions.
One other proposal of Meta is the restriction of the presence of ‘business people’ in the Assembly: in fact this concerns the biggest issue of electoral corruption despite the fact that the term ‘businessmen’ might have been the wrong choice of word. What we know for a fact is that from the ranks of all the parties there exist various individuals often rich or even more often in the type of ‘strongmen’ whose source of wealth and local power is at best in the grey area. Despite having virtually no experience and contribution in their parties they fill up the MP ranks because they can buy/produce votes, securing for themselves future sources of income and protection, which ultimately leads to state capture. In this context, opposition leader Basha rightly points out the need to start as soon as possible the work on the necessary bylaws and changes that would bring the decriminalization law to life.
The real way to increase the overall quality of representation for Albanian voters is through a full implementation of the decriminalization law and the assumption of some good common sense in assessing the biographies of candidates and not their wallets. One other potential interpretation is to reduce the percentage of business people in favor to increasing that of intelligentsia or academia since the intellectual capacities of the Parliament are in serious need of upgrading.
Prime Minister Rama mentioned one proposal that has been around for a long time, highlighted mainly by civil society organizations: the de-politicization of electoral commissions. In a national conference gathering the proposals for the Electoral Code in 2011, the Albanian Institute for International Studies advocated for commissions composed by people who are trained professionals and not appointed by political parties. We still stand by it. This is a particularly difficult step and parties will very much hesitate to take it. However all relevant actors need to realize that eventually the electoral administration of Albania needs to be independent and accountable.
Other proposals included the limitation of extravagant campaign costs especially regarding the TV commercials and better oversight over party finance mechanisms as well as reporting.
The option to finance campaigns entirely from the state budget is not feasible in the current conditions in Albania from both the enforcement side and form the economic cost affordability. However better oversight over expenditure is needed to ultimately avoid future political corruption. There are existing models on how to do that. Drafters of the reform should take those into account. Also the role and capacities of the Central elections Commission should be strengthened in this regard.
These are all important aspects that would considerably improve the electoral process and by default improve the quality of democratic representation of Albanian citizens. Despite the limited time until the elections next year, the process of changing the Electoral Code represents yet another opportunity for political actors to demonstrate their willingness and responsibility to offer to the voters an overall better and more transparent electoral process. The proposals put forward should be carefully considered. Otherwise we shall be left thinking: that was too good to be true!
