From Farce to Tragedy: Sunday’s local elections

Nothing could have been more telling, of the problems that hampered Sunday’s local election, than the image of a frazzled Sali Berisha struggling to work out which box in which to put his voting papers. Amid scores of microphones and television cameras, Berisha attempted to look triumphant as he placed his vote, while an official desperately tried to prevent him from putting it in the wrong box. Like a kind of slap-stick humour, Berisha smiled, looked confused, moved to the next box, smiled again, looked confused again, moved again etc, until finally he managed to get them in the right ones. It was an impression that characterised the events that were to unfold throughout the day.
My own experience of the poll largely consisted of accompanying my husband and mother-in-law as they cast their votes in a primary school in Myslym Shyri in the late morning. As we made our way up there, the streets were notably quiet as they continued to be throughout the day. Once at the polling room, and poking my nose inside, I was immediately struck by what had so confused Berisha earlier in the day. Examples of the four voting papers were pasted on the wall above their respective boxes. They could hardly have been more similar in colour; of the four, three looked to me like two shades of green and one more reddish green. And it wasn’t just me. As I watched the voters move from the booths to the voting boxes, confusion spread across their faces. A rather frazzled official then tried to assist with colour recognition as people lunged towards the incorrect box. It would be interesting to know just how many votes were cast in error.
The process in the booth was unbelievably sluggish. With only two voting boxes available, the line moved excruciatingly slowly, and we were there at least 45 minutes despite the fact that we were fifth in line when we arrived. Problems with the voters’ lists also slowed down the process. In some areas the lists didn’t arrive until late in the morning and in others there were errors in the lists themselves. Berisha was not the only high-profile voter who encountered difficulties on the day. LSI leader, Ilir Meta, was also faced with confusion when he turned up to vote, in front of the cameras, and his name could not be found on the list in his district.
In terms of the wait, we certainly did better than most. When we returned home later in the day, there were three booths in our small street with a crowd outside each. The placing of these booths was also somewhat bizarre; one was in an empty shop, one in an internet caf顡nd the other in the bar at the corner. Given the small size of the shop and the internet caf鬠the bulk of those waiting had to do so outside. It was hardly the sign of a well thought out voting process.
The lines near our apartment lines were moving no faster – and indeed, probably more slowly – than those we had encountered earlier in the day. Each time I checked outside the window, it seemed that it was largely the same people crowded around the doorway. While they closed sometime after 7pm, more than an hour after the designated closing time, it is unlikely many of those waiting were able to vote. As we saw on reports on television throughout the day, people in some areas of the country had been waiting for up to four hours to vote.
Despite the long waits, however, the fact that some voting centres were closed while so many people were still voting was wrong. Although this happened quite some time after the 6pm closing time, the majority of those voting had been waiting from well beyond that time, given the delays the process had already encountered. It was an error of the process, not the electors, so the process should have been adapted to the wishes of the latter.
This is not to say that there weren’t valid concerns about the legality of some of those votes placed later in the day. Numerous reports have emerged in the weeks leading up to the elections of fake birth certificates circulating that would be used as identification by voters on Sunday in order to vote twice. The concern that there was straightforward vote rigging going on was heightened by the footage of a rather guilty-looking Deputy Minister of Interior, Ferdinand Poni – the person responsible for the election process – in a private kancellari, with a swathe of official looking documents, busy photocopying them.
The danger of vote rigging was exacerbated during the day by the reports that the ink being used with which to indelibly mark voters’ thumbs could be washed off immediately with a bit of raki. A friend of mine showed me his completely clean thumb just a couple of hours after he had voted. The possibility of double-voting was therefore made even more likely. This ‘fly-by-night’ ink was another in the series of those euphemistically termed ‘irregularities’ that occurred on the day.
Then the counting startedŠand stoppedŠand started againŠand stopped againŠTensions rose, confusion spread, and annoyance and irritation turned to anger. The coverage by very late evening was showing lots of shouting, pushing and shoving in various voting centres around the country. By Monday it was the dramatic scenes of a fight in a voting centre in Gjirokaster that were dominating the news of the counting process. The tensions over the counting process – that is still not finished even as I write on Thursday morning – culminated in the violent episode in Ndroq, outside Tirana, that left one commissioner fighting for his life in hospital on Wednesday night.
From Berisha’s attempt to vote in the morning – as farce – the seriously defective process ended in tragedy.
These may have been the ‘most expensive’ elections in post-communist Albania, as Berisha declared somewhat disingenuously on Sunday, but they were certainly not ‘the best ever organised’ ones that he also claimed them to be. Having witnessed the state election in 2005, which of course had its own difficulties, it was clear that Sunday’s attempt had gone considerably more awry. It is sad to see the country take this step backwards, when it so desperately needs to take one in the other direction.