TIRANA, Nov. 7 – Albania’s main opposition Democratic Party has officially asked the Central Election Commission to invalidate and repeat the mayoral by-election in the southeastern city of Korça following allegations of vote-buying.
The ruling Socialist Party candidate, Deputy Mayor Sotiraq Filo, won the election by a wide margin. The city, one of Albania’s top five municipalities, had to go to early polls due to the resignation the previous mayor, Niko Peleshi, who left to become Albania’s deputy prime minister.
The Democrats’ request came two days after the broadcasting of hidden-camera footage in an investigative television show that appears to show students being paid about $20 each by Socialist activists at electoral offices on election day.
Oerd Bylykbashi, a Democratic Party lawmaker, told journalists the voting process at been marred by corruption and vote-buying so the CEC must order a do-over election. He said the Socialist leaders had implemented “a criminal scheme” in order to win at all cost. The Democratic Party says it also wants to set up a parliamentary commission to investigate the claims.
The local leader of the Socialist Party told the media the payments in question were not to buy votes. He said they were reimbursements made by the local party youth forum to its own members in order to cover travel expenses for university students who had to travel home from Tirana to vote, according to Socialist officials.
State prosecutors have announced that they have launched an investigation in the matter, which first came to light after the country’s best-known investigative show, Fiks Fare on Top Channel, showed the hidden-camera tape taken on election day last Sunday.
The broadcast was followed by an immediate and strong reaction of the opposition Democratic Party, whose candidate Sotiraq Stratobërdha lost the election.
“Socialist Party leader Edi Rama marred and damaged the election with dirty money,” Democratic Party chairman Lulzim Basha said in a press conference. “They were caught red-handed with a network of criminal gangs, organized with record-keeping, computers and cash in hand to buy the vote of citizens Korça, based on a detailed, carefully prepared plan in the offices of the Socialist Party.”
Prime Minister Rama told parliament Thursday the government was open to an investigation and urged the opposition to prove its accusations in court.
According a statement by the state prosecutors’ office an investigation on the matter is undergoing and several people involved would be questioned.
“Offering or giving money or material goods … to make people vote in a certain way or to ask them to participate or not to vote is punishable with imprisonment from six months to two years,” the prosecution said in a statement.
The Democratic Party leader said the party would keep pushing for the election to be repeated. The party’s MPs organized a protest in parliament on Thursday, throwing copies of 2000 lek bills in the air to symbolize the amount of money given to the students on the hidden-camera tape.
Albania has a long history of contested elections marred by accusations of vote-buying and other irregularities.
