Opposition says elections are to be manipulated

TIRANA, March 30 – The main opposition Socialist Party strongly complained earlier this week that some 200,000 voters were missing from the election list, a fact that would serve as a tool to the governing Democratic Party to manipulate the June 28 parliamentary elections.
Socialist lawmaker Gramoz Ruci said that the government was failing to provide citizens with the new identity cards. He said that the government has yet to open the application offices in 60 percent of the country. They also said that the positioning of these offices are far from the small villages and it would make it impossible for farmers to receive the IDs.
The opposition said the government was manipulating those voters who have no passport, thus unable to vote.
Official figures showed there are 730,000 Albanians without a passport and only 150,000 of them have applied for the new IDs.
The opposition has said that the government should provide their IDs for free, something that has been opposed by the authorities, in turn the price has been reducted for different groups of people and it will be provided for free only to invalids and students.
The government opposes such complaints saying everything is on track and everybody is to get a new ID on time. They also decided that April would be used only for those people without passports to apply for the IDs.
The June 28 elections are considered a key test to the country’s integration steps, especially for the process towards EU membership.