Election preparations start on wrong foot

TIRANA, Nov. 25 – Albania will hold parliamentary elections in June next year and the newly-created Central Election Commission should have started preparations for the process.
But CEC’s work did not start normally.
The two political groupings- governing Democratic Party and main opposition Socialist Party נstarted immediately to fight over the details.
One of the first jobs for the CEC was setting the format, the division of the country into the election circles and the number of the parliamentary seats each one is to vote for.
The opposition Socialists opposed a slight change of the number of parliamentary seats that the northeastern Kukes district is to have for next year. Based on what the Interior Ministry had reported (the Democrats run the government now), due to the increased number of the population there a new seat should be added to Kukes, believed to be more supportive to the governing Democrats, and that is to be cut from the central district of Berat, largely considered to be much more supporting to the Socialists. (Interior Minister Flamur Noka is from Kukes area.)
The Socialist Party expressed its surprise for such a sudden increase of the births in Kukes, a significant difference from the national average. They said the ministry had not responded to their request made recently, unlike the other times.
The CEC, headed from Lefteri Lleshi, once adviser to Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli of the governing Democrats, urged the opposition to take the case at the Electoral College. But the Socialists strongly opposed that reminding everyone of the role that College played in the last elections, very much and openly supportive to the Democrats. They said the old College cannot decide about seats in the upcoming elections.
The wrangle is to go on for some time. There is not so much attention to the developments in the electoral process at this moment when all the eyes have turned to the celebrations for the 100th independence anniversary. It is not going to be even in the near future, when all the political friction will focus on the blame for the negative answer to the EU’s candidate status request. And that means that elections will not be different from all the others in the last two post-communist decades.
Though not openly said, it is clear that holding free and fair elections, in line with the international standards, will be a critical point, not to say the basis of deciding what position Tirana will have with Europe next year.
A local private television station reported last week that Germany, France, Netherlands and other big western countries have made it clear among themselves that elections next year in Albania will decide whether the country is ready to take the next step toward EU membership. Back home, in Albania political parties and their representatives try to turn down such words.
Elections are not a condition to receive the status of candidate country, but for the opening of membership negotiations, according to Democratic Party senior leader and MP Fatos Beja. He said that is a thesis launched by the Albanian opposition which they also are lobbying in Brussels. “There an attempt in the last days even by the European left to tie the status with the elections, at a time when the stance of the European Commission has been clear,” said Beja.
Whatever the words coming from one or the other political party mean or intend to say, elections will be a key and fundamental basis for the country’s progress toward the bloc.