TIRANA, July 10 /ATA/ – Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Thursday that an open-list electoral system make a current pre-electoral coalition formula impossible, because the ballot paper as it would require extremely large ballot papers.
“Taking notice of the circumstances when we are seeking to make sure that all parties have their voice and gain what they wish from the process, the open-list system would make the current coalition formula impossible as we would have to print an extremely large ballot paper, a kind of huge sheet spreading from the Tirana University Building to the Skenderbeg monument at central square,” PM Rama said in a press conference.
Rama said this “doesn’t mean we intend or we are seeking to hamper political parties to forge their own coalitions and run as one single and unique political subject, as it is up to them to do so.”
Rama went on saying that the decision to support an open-list electoral system is not a matter of arithmetic, “but it is our conviction that an overwhelming majority of the Albanian people is asking for something and we will grant it.”
“I don’t wish to be portrayed by others as the man who controls everything and who wants a closed-list system. I don’t think that the open lists are a miraculous recipe that would qualitatively transform the Albanian Parliament, but I believe that the opportunity for the citizens to have a preferential choice in the list of political parties they vote for is absolutely mandatory in these circumstances, when the political class itself is seen as a closed circle,” he said.
“The June 5 agreement was reached as a result of our readiness to offer any concessions. This is the first time in the history of this country when an agreement on the Electoral Code is totally drafted by the opposition,” Rama noted.
The government head said “we have stepped over ourselves just to please the Democratic Party and the group it leads.”
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