Electoral reform stalls at slow pace

TIRANA, Feb. 1 – Albanian political parties are in negotiations on the electoral reform.
Yet, there is no news from what the parliamentary group is doing or has achieved.
What Albanians are hearing on that issue is more on what the opposition political parties are debating regularly.
There has been disagreement among them as to whether they should support a national proportional system or the regional proportional one which is currently in place.
The governing Democratic party-led coalition has said they are not in favor of such a change of the system.
Meanwhile, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has agreed to provide expertise to Albania’s Special Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform. An expert team started a visit to Tirana this week on the invitation of the Albanian Parliament.
A statement of the ODIHR said they will advise on national proportional reconfiguration of the planned amendments to the Electoral Code to be drafted ahead of parliamentary elections.
Beata Martin-Rozumilowicz, head of the ODIHR Election Department, said “ODIHR is ready to provide what help it can immediately.”
The expert team held meetings with the Parliament Speaker, the committee and a subgroup made up of technical election experts, as well as with representatives of smaller political parties, civil society and the international community.
The ODIHR said they will not provide any recommendations for the amendments of the electoral reform but will simply provide their expertise to the working group of the Albanian parliament. The ODIHR has already made recommendations in its final report on the local elections and a December 2011 Joint Opinion on the Electoral Code, issued by ODIHR and the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.