Situation was calm on voting day and during the voting process
TIRANA, June 21 – Albanians voted Sunday in local municipal elections considered an important step in their efforts to launch membership negotiations with the European Union.
Last year, Albania was granted EU candidate status, and now Tirana is expecting to get approval for the launch of full membership negotiations.
Though the election process itself was not set as one of the five top EU priorities – Brussels wants tangible results in the rule of law, the justice system and the fight against crime and corruption – the EU also expects free and fair elections in post-communist Albania, where voting processes have often suffered from violence or manipulation and political squabbling.
An EU-supported administrative reform was also tested by the elections. It drastically cut the number of municipalities in Albania from 384 to 61 by merging smaller rural municipalities with nearby larger urban ones.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, whose ruling Socialist coalition won the majority of the mayoral seats in the country, said the elections sealed popular approval for the reform.
About 3.4 million voters were eligible to cast their ballots in the country’s seventh local elections since the fall of communism in 1990 to elect 61 mayors and 1,595 municipal counselors.
About one-third of the names in the voters’ list are those of migrants living abroad who do not get to vote on election day.
There were reports that some buses for voters were sent to Greece to pick up people. Some returned empty.
Voting started Sunday at 7 a.m. and ended at 7 p.m. Some stations remained open after that to allow people waiting in line to cast their ballots.
About 6,000 police officers were deployed near 5,300 polling stations and hundreds of army special troops were guarding government buildings and embassies to allow the police officers that usually perform guard duties to go to the voting centers instead.
The voting proceeded peacefully in most places with only a few minor conflicts.
Officials from the governing Socialists and the opposition Democrats called on counting commissioners to be careful and fair in the process, which has previously been marred by differences and efforts of manipulation.
Counting proceeded in a general calm way, starting immediately after the end of the voting a day earlier. Again, there were a couple of minor incidents, including in Fier and Malesi e Madhe, but they did not affect the results, officials said.
Results showed the country’s left wing governing coalition won most municipalities, including the capital and other main cities.
