After a smooth election and clear overall results, recounts and appeals heat up the rhetoric and delay the official publishing of final results
TIRANA, July 24 – In a general election that had otherwise gone smoothly – with the loser gracefully accepting defeat and the winner humbly celebrating victory – the conflict and disputes of results returned to the limelight this week, accompanied by some of the harshest rhetoric to date.
Several disputes involving the result in three northern counties have led to recounts and appeals, and allegations of votes being “stolen” by both sides.
As it stands the disputes could only affect one or two seats and would not overall alter the results of the election, which the Socialist Party-led coalition won in a landslide. But the two sides are fighting every decision of the Central Election and Commission as it could shift one MP from the Democratic Party-led coalition to the winners of the election, the Socialist Party-led coalition, bringing its total seats in parliament to 84, and giving it a three-fifths majority required for many important reforms.
Recounts and appeals
The political conflict reached a high point after Albania’s Central Elections Commission ordered and conducted a recount of all ballots in Lezha County, increasing the number of votes allocated to the Democrats, but not changing the earlier results in terms of mandate distribution. The recount marked a sudden escalation of problems in the post-election administration in what had been otherwise a slow but smooth process.
A special team set up by CEC recounted everyone of Lezha’s more than 81,000 cast ballots. They found the Democratic-led coalition had secured about 800 votes more than the Socialist-led coalition. The findings marked a change from the thin margin of just 39 votes in the prior count, but did not alter the latest mandate distribution that saw the Democratic-led coalition get four MPs in the county, followed by the Socialist-led coalition with three.
Nonetheless, the findings fueled angry remarks by the Democrats, who despite accepting their landslide loss earlier in the election are now saying the leftist coalition resorted to dirty tricks to get more votes.
The Socialists had objected the recounts, arguing the security of the storage chain for the ballot boxes was in question. They have appealed to the Electoral College, a judicial body with final say, to stop the recount.
The counting teams were still working on a recount of the neighboring Shkodra County ballots as of press time, but so far they had found almost discrepancies with the earlier results.
The recount in Lezha was a request of the Democrats, however, the Socialists had also made their own request for a voter list verification with the Interior Ministry, claiming that 156 people who showed up as voters were not in Albania at the time.
CEC originally decided that a recount of all ballots should take place in Lezha, one of 12 electoral districts, after a smaller recount of 10 ballot boxes showed there was discrepancy between the recorded result and the recount.
The problem with the recounts is that they are likely to delay the official results, which are already overdue a month after the election. The decision meant a recount of more than 200,000 ballots in the northwestern counties of Lezha and Shkodra, after a second county was added to the recount at the request of a small party and a CEC member.
“My request aims to make the situation entirely transparent,” said Klement Zguri, the CEC member with the ties to the Democratic Party who proposed the recount, calling the discrepancy “dramatic.”
The Socialists’ legal representative at CEC, Genc Gjoncaj, was furious at the CEC decision of a total recount in Lezha County. He added CEC, which is dominated by Democratic Party nominees, is trying to delay and alter the official results in order to shrink the majority of the winning coalition.
“We have serious concerns that this procedure of delaying the process is being done to achieve a different result from what the voters have decided in this county,” he told reporters at CEC, citing the 2011 administrative election in Tirana, where the new mayor was elected after a recount, which the Socialists say was manipulated to alter the actual vote.
Gjoncaj said his party would appeal the decision at the Electoral College, a judicial body with final say on election matters. He also said CEC members should be aware that they could be held legally liable for the decision, which he called “crazy.”
CEC had already decided in favor of a complaint by the Democratic Party, ruling that preliminary results were wrong in Lezha and a seat earlier awarded to the Socialists should be given to the Democrats instead.
That ruling brought the total numbers in parliament to 83-57 in favor of the Socialist-led coalition, meaning the Socialists no longer have the 84 seats that make up the three-fifths qualified majority in parliament required for key reforms.
All CEC decisions will likely end up in the Electoral College, a judicial body comprising eight Appeals Court judges, which in several cases has assumed CEC’s responsibility because of the commission’s inability to approve decisions requiring a qualified majority of five votes. The Electoral College is also expected to give final certification of Albania’s June 23 general elections.
In a decision that plunged the CEC into deadlock, a CEC member nominated by the Socialist Movement for Integration, was replaced in April with rival’s nominee, following SMI’s departure from the Democratic Party-led coalition.
Three other opposition proposed members resigned in protest leaving CEC with only four members, unable to approve decisions requiring a qualified majority of five votes including the certification of elections. Which is why every appeal to the Electoral College made so far as started with the legal point that the CEC has no legal right to order recounts.
Elections court overrules CEC
But the Electoral College, a group of judges with final say on election matters, decided to cancel a recount of ballots in the northwestern county of Lezha, reversing the earlier decision by the Central Elections Commission, however they canceled it once the recount had already taken place.
The panel of judges ruled in favor of the Socialist Party.
The decision voided the recount, which as already taken place, finding some discrepancies, but not big enough to change the original distribution of parliamentary seats in the county, which stands at four for the Democrats’ coalition and three for their Socialist rivals.
The decision probably means all other recount decisions CEC takes will also be voided, but CEC officials said a different decision by the judges was needed for them to stop working on recounts in other places.
The recount in Shkodra, which ended with no discrepancies, came at a request by the Republican Party, a member of the center-right coalition, which claimed it had been stripped of one MP seat, given wrongly to its bigger ally, the Democratic Party.
The Electoral College ruling, which sets a precedent for future CEC decisions, angered the Democratic Party. Oerd Bylykbashi, a Democratic Party legal legal representative described the decision as unprecedented.
“The decision by the college has created a huge handicap. This is open theft of about 1,200 votes by the Socialist Party, an MP mandate has been stolen by the SP,” said Bylykbashi, referring to the vote recount.
He said the Democrats would still address the Electoral College based on facts unveiled during the ballot recount and the discrepancy between the recorded results and the ballot recount.
Hailing the decision by the Electoral College, a Socialist Party legal representative said this ruling should have an automatic effect even on the Shkodra region.
“The important thing is that the college interpreted the laws correctly and identified that CEC’s activity on the recount has openly violated the law,” said Koli Bele, SP’s legal representative.
The Electoral College, a judicial body comprising of eight Appeals Court judges, is now expected to assume final decision making, as a result of CEC’s inability to adopt decisions requiring a qualified majority of five votes.
Video investigation ordered
In addition to the recounts, an investigation is set to take place on the ballots cast in Albania’s northeastern county of Kukes over election irregularities last month that the junior partner in the winning coalition says cost it a seat in parliament.
The Electoral College overruled the Central Elections Commission’s decision on the matter, following an appeal by the Socialist Movement for Integration.
The college’s panel of judges made the ruling Tuesday after accepting as proof video footage that showed suspected discrepancies between the result accepted by the CEC and what was seen on video. The mandate distribution was decided on a thin margin of 15 votes, demanding an investigation, the judges ruled.
The SMI says it lost its MP seat in the northern region of Kukes by only a few votes, and demanded the recount of 15 ballot boxes from the district of Tropoja, claiming manipulation based on video footage from the local zone commission where ballots were counted.
They say they would get 150 votes more in a recount, based on the footage.
Two court-appointed experts will now look over the footage and report back to the court before a final decision is made.
Kukes County has the smallest representation in Albania’s 140-member parliament, four seats, and is considered a stronghold of the Democratic Party, which lost the June 23 national election in a landslide.
Disputes lead to sudden escalation in rhetoric
Outgoing Prime Minister Sali Berisha has said he accepts the landslide defeat to the opposition Socialist-led coalition and the winner, Edi Rama. and that he will recognize the results CEC issues, however he used harsh words about the Socialist leader warning him not to cancel the recount, saying the Socialist vote came from crime, drugs and cartels.
“He [Rama] must know that we will never recognize power that comes from falsification and deceit. The best way is to count every ballot, and I will respect every vote that is in favor or against,” Berisha told reporters. “The Democratic Party will not recognize the power that comes out of stolen votes.”
Berisha’s comments were followed by similar remarks by Genti Bogdani, a Democratic MP, who said the election was “stolen,” referring to irregularities in Lezha.
The comments blur Berisha’s earlier stance, when he unconditionally conceded defeat on June 26, the first time an election outcome had not been contested in the Balkan country since the fall of communism in the early 1990s.
After dominating for two decades, Berisha is no longer officially the leader of the Democratic Party, but he still enjoys support of many inside the party, and commentators see the current leader, Lulzim Basha, as Berisha’s hand-hand picked successor.
Some analysts also tied Berisha’s outburst with an interview a day earlier by Socialist Party MP Arta Dade who said if the new government should make sure every one should be punished for alleged illegal or criminal acts, starting with Berisha and his close family and associates. She said she would resign from the lawmaker’s post if an investigation on corruption allegations does not take place.
The new Albanian parliament parliament is expected to gather on the first week of September for the first time, but that deadline seems far away as complaints and appeals continue.
The general election was closely monitored by the European Union, which has twice rejected Albania’s membership applications and warned that the polls would be “a crucial test” for its further progress toward integration in the 28-member bloc.
