TIRANA, June 12 /ATA/ – By Maela Marini/ The co-chair of the Ad-Hoc Electoral Reform Commission, Damian Gjiknuri, stated on Friday that “the final draft of the Electoral Reform will be completed within Monday.”
At a media briefing after the regular meeting of the Political Council, Gjiknuri said that “we agreed on most of the amendments related to funding issues in the election campaign and the role of the media in the election campaign.”
“There are 2-3 items that are being specified with the technical experts and I believe that by Monday we will have all the legal amendments to the new Electoral Code ready, including the formation of the CEC and all other elements of the Electoral Code, ” Gjiknuri said.
According to him, “these amendments reflect all the elements of the agreement, including issues agreed upon with the DP as well as the extra-parliamentary and parliamentary opposition in this Political Council.”
Gjiknuri said that “by Monday or Tuesday at its latest I will officially submit the draft to the AdHoc Electoral Reform Commission.”
Meanwhile, he added, we are also discussing some mechanisms regarding the procedures for selecting the commission members, so that it will be an open scheme, which will naturally reflect the concerns raised by the extra-parliamentary opposition, but all these remain to be seen in the last 2-3 days.
Gjiknuri said that “experts were tasked with finalizing the draft by Monday, including legal packages, such as amendments to the Code of Procedure, amendments to the law on the State Police, the law on whistle-blowers.”
He said that “the parties involved decided to allow political advertising, despite a recommendation from the Council of Europe, yet we think time has not come for us to ban political advertising, which will be part of the Electoral Code.”
Regarding the financing of the campaign, Gjiknuri said that “we have agreed that the state budget will increase twice as high the funding for parties and the ratio will be 1 to 3, so the budget from private funding will be three times as much as that allocated from the state budget. ”
Bylykbashi: By Monday, Political Council to get its hands on full document containing amendments to the Electoral Code
Whereas the PD representative on Political Council, Oerd Bylykbashi, said that “today the Political Council discussed the outstanding issues that need to be addressed in the light of the agreement on electoral administration and other issues that conclude the electoral reform.”
“The meeting touched upon problems of the media in the campaign and the financing of political parties, but what is important is that until the guarantees agreed upon on June 5 regarding the election administration, but also other guarantees such as; biometric identification and other instruments that protect the vote of the electors are fully incorporated in the electoral legislation, in the Electoral Code, until then the council will keep working to finalize the technical agreement, ” he said.
“By Monday, Political Council will get its hands on the full document containing the amendments to the Electoral Code to definitely finalize the June 5 deal,» he said.
/sm/
