Lutfi Dervishi
Albania’s electoral process will, at the very least, require another week before it be considered closed. The Central Electoral Commission is inspecting complaints from the main parties and according to the electoral code it is this institution that has the last word on the elections.
Western diplomats in Tirana have emphasized that the evaluation of the June 28 parliamentary election will greatly depend on how institutions handle complaints.
There is no dilemma about who will govern for the next four years and who will be mandated by the Republic’s President to form the new government.
However, there is another debate that should have been closed on June 28, election day. Unfortunately, the debate started on June 28 and, from the looks of it, will accompany us till the next local elections set in 2011. The debate focuses on the elections themselves.
The head of the Central Election Commission (CEC) is not the only one who says that these elections were the best ones ever organized in Albania. Independent analysts agree with such a statement, too. Voters’ electronic lists and vote counting with the use of recording cameras make the two pillars on which this progress stands. Even preliminary reports from the mission of foreign observers considered lists as an achievement and cameras as a novelty.
However, the head of opposition, Mr. Edi Rama, holds a different opinion on the elections. He labels the Democratic Party led coalition with the Socialist Movement for Integration as “the most shameful coalition ever seen in Albania”. Mr. Rama accuses the government of stealing the mandates and exercising pressure over the justice system.
Unhappy from a CEC decision, the head of the biggest opposition party declares democracy is in danger and conditions are being created not to recognize the new government as legitimate.
The truth, as usual, stands somewhere in the middle. The strong rhetoric of the opposition leader is related to his wavering position in the party, because he failed to win with the coalition he led.
Elections showed progress, but also visible problems.
Election day was graded with maximal evaluations from both local actors and the international community. However, what happened before and most importantly after election day leaves little space for optimism. Problems with counting were highly visible. It is also a well known secret that the problems during counting were caused by the two main political parties. Counting in particular zones gave both parties the opportunity to use blocking tactics in attempts to win mandates on the table. In such a close race, such tactics heated up the political tension and put a question mark over the will of political parties to hold problem-free elections.
Now, the loupe watching over the elections of a NATO member is much bigger and stands much closer. “Free and fair elections” is an inexistent phrase in the OSCE-ODHIR reports.
Presently, standards are the topic of the day. But even when it comes to standards, we still don’t have a check list where at the bottom we can calculate the percentage of the standards completion rate. These elections had problems in administration, counting, and the behavior of political parties during the process. No one expects an excellent grade regarding these elections, but there is almost a blind sort of faith that the next elections will be better than the ones on June 28.
How?
The greatest fear before the elections was based on the assumption that there would be problems regarding the identity cards. That there would be voters “voting” while not living in Albania and that fake identity cards would be supplied.
June 28 proved that such fears, edging on paranoia for some, were hardly likely to really happen for others, even though discussed as “problems” in public. Much discussion will focus on the counting process of the next elections. And that will be solved, no problems will be identified. But who guarantees that another problem will not emerge and that Albanian elections will not once more hold the label of “progress and problems”? a label we have appropriated since 2001.
