TIRANA, Sept 28 /ATA/ The proposals for amendments to Electoral Code were approved in principle by Parliamentary Law Committee, meanwhile tomorrow they will be discussed at length. The two initiatives proposed by the democrat group and SP will merge into one to be discussed tomorrow.
Co-chairman of Ad-Hoc Committee for Electoral Reform, also representative of SP on Political Council, Damian Gjiknuri, presented on Monday at Parliamentary Law Committee the draft of SP for amendments to Electoral Code.
Gjiknuri said that, “SP has tabled a draft law that amends exactly those issues, which are mandated by the constitutional change. I want to draw attention to this because of an ongoing debate about the approach to the electoral reform, its content, the provisions that should be touched and of course the electoral law always reflects the political interests of all political actors involved. It is a difficult law as long as everyone is concerned about his piece of the electoral cake. So no one refers to the principles except for issues related to race equality, such as the role of the state, the role of institutions, equality in voting, etc. As for other systemic elements, they generally reflect the political interests of the actors who have had the opportunity to craft the legislation for the time being. This is true we do not have to hide from this. The big parties will have to shoulder more weight. A new player wants to change the game. “These are already well established in life in general, let alone in political life.”
Therefore, when we submitted the proposals here, and when I heard the speakers about other changes that were not reflected in the code before, the public is well aware, politics either. We conducted a process, which included the out of parliament opposition in the consultations, meaning that even the changes that we as a working group have presented, have been limited only to elements that translate into constitutional changes without touching other elements of the Electoral Code because it is the June 5 deal and the agreement with international community and out of parliament opposition that forbid us to do so,” Gjiknuri said.
To sum up, Gjiknuri said, “ we as committee have our hands tied, we should reflect only the elements that do not fall counter to June 5 deal, the Electoral Code in effect. There are certain important agreements negotiated with factors whom we need to turn to. The parliament is always sovereign and in the event of failing to come to agreement, we should get to the possible minimum of disagreement or conflict instead of starting from scratch. This is a principle we have drawn upon in our proposal.’
Secondly, he said, “the draft law reflects the constitutional changes that were materialized in July and at this point I want to emphasize two, three elements. First, the Constitution provided and the philosophy of change was that political parties and voters compete in elections through their representatives when they propose them. The Constitution does not really mention the word coalition anymore, but the practice of European countries and democratic countries in general, cannot deny some political forces the freedom of running together. And naturally the proposals of the new Electoral Code envisage that the parties have the opportunity to form their alliances, sticking to the definitions in force. Which means the coalition is a group of parties united through an agreement that choose a leader who has the right to represent this political consortium, but under conditions of race equality and they have the right and obligation to present a list. ”
“No country of the OSCE / ODIHR space and we have really conducted some research into this, I challenge the expertise of the Assembly as have I challenged the media and anyone else, to bring a model of a country that applies a regional proportional system with open lists or even closed lists, which contains the wording of the coalition and the formula that serves to divide the mandates of the coalition as was in the Electoral Code. To be honest, no country applies this practice, ” Gjiknuri said.
Gjiknuri added that with constitutional amendments this tradition has been put to rest.
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