On July 3d, 2005, in Albania were held the general elections for the Albanian Parliament. These elections represented a crucial issue for Albania, taking into consideration the efforts made by the country and the steps undertaken towards the integration in the European Community.

The electoral system in Albania is a mixture of the majority and proportional system. The Albanian Parliament consists of 140 members. One hundred of them are elected directly in 100 nominal electoral zones, in only one round, and the remaining 40 MPs are elected in one multi-nominal zone (the whole country), based on the lists of parties or coalitions. The zone boundaries were established by law by the Albanian parliament four months prior to the Election Day.

The Albanian Constitution provides for an independent body which is responsible for the organization and the administration of elections in the country. This independent body is The Central Election Commission. It is a permanent Commission, composed by seven members, nominated for a seven year mandate and is which renewed every three years. Two members are nominated by the Parliament; two members are nominated by the President of the Republic of Albania, while the other three members are nominated by the High Council of Justice. The functioning of CEC as well as the electoral process is regulated by The Electoral Code, which was firstly approved in the year 2000 and afterwards amended continuously, before each general election was held in Albania.

Prior to the 2005 general elections, a bi-partisan committee established by the Albanian Parliament and strongly supported by the OSCE presence in the country, prepared draft amendments to the Electoral Code, aiming to improve electoral procedures and to establish precise deadlines. The amendments were then approved by the Albanian Parliament on January 10, 2005.

Such amendments introduced new electoral procedures different from the ones provided by previous electoral laws.

The changes to the electoral code, provided for the first time for a centralized counting of the ballot papers.

The amendments provided also longer deadlines for political parties to submit complains and appeals both to the CEC and the Court.

For the first time, the system “first past the post” was applied for the parliamentary elections, thus avoiding the second round.
For the first time there was applied the system of opened lists submitted by parties and coalitions for the proportional voting.

For the first time, the voter’s registry was prepared by the local authorities, removing this task from the responsibilities of CEC.

For the first time, political parties and candidates running in these election are obliged to declare all financing and sponsorships as well as all expenses for their electoral campaign.

KEY ISSUES OF 2005 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Voters’ Registry

2.850.821 voters registered in the Voters’ Registry
1.403.473 voters or 49.23 % caste their vote in the Election Day
131.140 voters or 4.6 % were first time voters

The voter’s registry was a prerogative of CEC, which ad to prepare both preliminary and final voters list, providing also the necessary time for the voters to revise the list. According to the newly introduced amendments producing the voters’ list is now responsibility of the local government, acting in each of the local administrative units in Albania. These bodies should implement a full registration of the voters living in the area they administer, defining also if each of the voters is permanently or temporarily residing within that local administrative unit. This issue was of great importance as in Albania the issue of civil registration related to inner migration is persistent. Thus the process of registration and verification was pretty hard and voluminous, and accurately observed by both political parties and foreign observers. Despite many contradictions and claims, the voter’s registry was not an issue of dispute between parties as far as they were involved in the process through the majors of the local units, belonging to one or the other party.

Political Parties and Candidates Registration

The political background in Albania still remains very fractioned. There are some 60 political parties officially registered by the Court.

The Electoral Code provides for the registration of political parties by the CEC, prior to each election, so that they can register and support their own candidates, and benefit by apposite public funding as well. The Electoral Code provides also that political parties should present evidence that they are supported by at least 7000 voters, either by presenting a declaration by one member of the Parliament that he is representative of that political party or by presenting a list of signatures of the supporters. Any political party failing to submit such documents, is not registered by CEC to take part in the election.

In this regard, CEC Albania received for the parliamentary elections of 2005 applications from 41 political parties. Thirty three of these applications were admitted and approved by CEC decision, while 7 of them were rejected. The result was that in the elections took part 27 political subjects, including three coalitions.

Further more there were 1295 candidates supported by political parties or independent running in 100 electoral zones. Only 98 or 7.94 % out of this number were females. While the voting in the proportional system, for the remaining 40 places in the parliament, involved 1616 candidates. Only 141 or 8.72 % out of this number were females

Electoral Officials

The electoral process was administered by 100 Zone Electoral Commissions which comprised 800 electoral officials appointed by the CEC based on the proposals submitted by political parties (the political parties that have the right to submit proposals for electoral officials are appointed on the basis of their electoral results in the previous elections). ZEC is the responsible electoral body for the administration of the elections in one electoral zone. There were also created 4783 polling stations, involving 38264 election officials through out Albania. Some other 4000 election officials were involved in the centralized counting process of the votes.
This year electoral commissions were made up by representatives of a greater number of parties than the previous law dispositions provided. Such amendments were probably introduced to suit small parties’ necessities to have a major control on the process and assure greater transparency of the procedures carried out in different electoral commissions.

Once nominated, election officials of all levels were obliged by law to attend the training programs organized by CEC. Any election official failing to meet this obligation was automatically removed from the duty and immediately replaced. This is a new disposition introduced lately to the Electoral Code, aiming to assure that the electoral process is carried out by people with the appropriate knowledge on electoral procedures. The training programs were implemented by CEC with the strong support of IFES Albania, which I find the opportunity to say THANK YOU for their continuous support aiming to strengthen the capacities of CEC Albania.

Counting of Ballots

The amendments to the electoral code introduced to the electoral system the centralized counting of ballots. In this regard CEC established 100 counting centers, one per each electoral zone. CEC issued instructions on how the zone election commissions should organize the counting centers and conduct the counting process. The implementation of such process was very opened and transparent, giving the possibility to all observers, international and domestic, as well as the media to follow the counting of the ballots. However it should be mentioned that due to law requirements, the counting process resulted to be quite long and some times even exhaustive for the election officials, as it was meant to continue without interruptions. This resulted in most of the cases in a delay of tabulation of the results by the zone electoral commissions.

Complains, appeals and their resolution

The system of disputes resolution in electoral matters appears to be largely dynamic. Prior to each election political parties seems to have the will to introduce amendments to the chapter of the electoral code regulating dispute resolution.
The actual provisions of the Albanian electoral law provide for a two scale system for presenting complains and appeals.
Complains can be filed at the central election commission as the main body to resolve any electoral dispute. Political parties and candidates may file two types of complains before CEC. The first type consist on complains against the decisions of zone electoral commissions, and mainly on the decision for the approving of the results in the specified electoral zone, while the second type deals with invalidity of the elections which concerns a larger number of problems which may make ground for invalidity. These two types of complains are distinguished by different deadlines for their filing. The complains against a decision of the zone electoral commission should be filed at the CEC within two days while the requests for invalidity should be filed at the CEC within ten days after the election day.

In this regard, I mention some figures. There have been 435 complains to the CEC. Some 346 complains were filed against the decisions of the zone electoral commissions, while 89 were the requests for invalidity. It should be underscored that in most of the cases, eligible parties failed to provide relevant supporting evidence. Thus CEC rejected around 85 % of the filed complains, accepting only a few of them.

All eligible parties may appeal a decision of the CEC at the Electoral College. The Electoral College is a special court established to only resolute disputes on electoral matters. The electoral law provides that the decisions of the Electoral College are final and no further appeals can be filed upon its decision. The Electoral College is made up of 8 judges of the appeal courts, selected by draw and nominated by the High Council of Justice. The composition of the Electoral College is meant to secure professionalism, transparency and what is more important to secure a non partisan resolution of all electoral disputes. So far, it has worked.

Financial declaration

Another newly introduced procedure is the obliged declaration of financial support and expenses by political parties and candidates running for the elections. This obligation is not yet well defined because the electoral code just mention the issue in terms of obligation, without précising any implementation procedure. In this regard the CEC stipulated an instruction providing for some quite simple procedures which should be followed by the political parties and the candidates while preparing the financial statements. Yet such procedures need to be revised and widened, in order to fully enforce the provisions of the electoral code in this matter.

Finally, I am very glad and proud to say that for the first time in the preliminary report of the OSCE/ODIHR Observing Mission for the Parliamentary Election of July 3, 2005, is clearly expressed the support to the CEC, whose work is recognized to be in full compliance to the standards. Such report mentions that the Parliamentary Elections of July 3, 2005 quite met the OSCE/ODIHR election standards

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