Meta suggests proportional electoral system

TIRANA, March 28 – Leader of the opposition Socialist Movement for Integration Ilir Meta suggested that Albania should have a clear proportional electoral system with a four percent minimum border for the political parties to enter the parliament. Albania at the moment has a mixed electoral system where 100 parliamentarians are elected directly based on the majority system while the other 40 MPs are elected based on the proportional system. The proposal naturally sparked a series of reaction from smaller parties as the level of four percent of the votes seems relatively high for most of them. It would generally mean that besides the two main political parties _ Democrats and Socialists – the other parties that could enter the parliament, based on the votes won in the last local polls, would be the SMI, Republicans, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, and one or two others. First reactions came from Meta’s allies in the opposition. Both Paskal Milo of the Social Democratic Union party and Neritan Ceka of the Democratic Alliance, though not openly opposing the idea, said that any decision or proposal of the kind should be first discussed among the allies. The Human Rights Union Party said that such capital electoral issues cannot be decided by a group of politicians ‘in power’ at the moment.
The suggestion to turn into a proportional system has come after all the election processes in post-communist Albania have been marred by irregularities. They start with the lack of a proper voters list to go to the manipulation of the votes and claims of manipulation that heighten up the situation, in many cases urging militants to even turn to the weapons to resolve their political issues. Meta in a brave way suggested the four percent level also taking into consideration his party’s votes collected in the Feb. 18 local polls. It is very much expected that there will be strong opposition from all the small parties, there are more than 50 political parties registered in the tiny Balkan country with an official 3.2 million population.