TIRANA, Oct. 5 – President Ilir Meta criticized on Friday the draft opinion of the Venice Commission, which assessed that Meta had exceeded his powers by canceling June 30 as the local elections and setting a new date through a presidential decree, in a letter sent to the President of the Venice Commission Gianni Buquicchio.
According to Meta, VC experts have often been contradictory in their assessments, unbalanced in presenting the facts and even exceeding of their powers and mandate.
There are at least ten points in the VC draft opinion with which President Ilir Meta disagrees with and just as many questions he asked the VC members to answer, as widely known experts in constitutional issues.
At the heart of Meta’s objection is that according to him, legal assessments “are insufficient unless they are decided in the light of the extreme circumstances in which they have been applied.” Thus, according to Meta, “the draft opinion is often contradictory” and “it gives the impression that the experts of the Venice Commission have been a priori guided by some fixed ideas, making the facts and analysis inconsistent with the conclusions of the draft opinion.”
According to him, “the presentation of the facts and circumstances in the draft opinion is unbalanced and incomplete” adding that “the avoidance and impossibility of a complete fact-finding process to prove the profound and widespread size of the political crisis in Albania a;sp brings about the wrong assessment of the legal situation.”
Meta further pointed out that “the draft opinion draws some conclusions that go beyond the mandate of the Venice Commission as an advisory body, which has not been asked by the Albanian Parliament” or that “the experts have in some cases exceeded their advisory powers, dressing themselves as judges.”
In the draft opinion, the VC experts, given the situation in Albania, point out that President Meta may have had legitimate intentions, but that he had no legal basis for the decision.
“The president can only cancel elections to local government bodies in a situation that meets the criteria for emergency measures. Even then, the President needs a specific legal basis – ad hoc – to postpone elections,” the Commission concludes, while stating that “cancellation of elections is only possible in situations that meet the requirement to declare a state of emergency. However, the applicable constitutional rules for emergency situations have not been followed in this case. There has not even been a political consensus that would have allowed the definition of an ad hoc legal basis.”
In his letter, Meta noted that “some assessments and conclusions of the experts of the Venice Commission contradict the jurisprudence of the Albanian Constitutional Court and the spirit on which the Constitution is built as regards the role and powers of the Head of State,” while stressing that “the experts have exceeded the scope of their work by interfering with the competencies and evaluation of the OSCE / ODIHR, the highest body authorized to monitor and handle electoral matters.”
In their draft opinion, however, VC experts address the situation created by the opposition’s boycott, which was also one of Meta’s arguments to annul June 30 elections, as the main opposition forces refused to participate.
According to the experts, “the boycott of elections by political parties, even if they represent a significant part of the electorate, cannot prevent the holding of regular elections. Otherwise, these parties would take the power to completely hinder any kind of elections.”
But according to Meta, “the draft opinion and the way it is built threaten to create a problematic precedent for a democratic social order” as he says “any autocratic leader will be inspired to push the opposition out of the system, or prevent their participation in the elections through hidden methods.”
In their conclusions, the VC points out that “the President has exceeded his constitutional powers by announcing and postponing local elections beyond the local authority’s electoral mandate without a specific legal basis. However, the elements set forth above could lead to the conclusion that these acts may not have been of a sufficiently serious nature to authorize the President’s dismissal.”
Meta concluded by saying that “this draft opinion rekindled political polarization just when the parties restored a bridge of dialogue.”
Earlier, prior to the publication of the draft opinion, Meta had praised the Venice Commission, applauding the invitation for the VC to assess the situation.
