TIRANA, April 29 /ATA/ Chairman of the Central Election Commission Ilirjan Celibashi said today that, “So far, 70 thousand emigrants have returned their ballot papers for the Parliamentary elections of May 11, out of over 245 thousand registered out-of-the country participants for this process.”
Chief Commissioner made this statement during today’s conference on occasion of the operational testing of the Electronic Voting and Counting System. He stated that, “This number corresponds to the 30% participation figure,” as according to him, over 30 thousand envelopes with ballot papers have not yet been delivered by the DHL postal company.”
“There are over 70 thousand voters who have returned their ballot papers out of over 245 thousand registered. We are waiting for the arrival of other ballot papers. We expect the postal company to distribute all the envelopes with the ballot papers. There are still 30 thousand envelopes that are not sent yet while elections are almost 2 weeks away”, said Celibashi.
According to head of the CEC, despite the problems, the system is functioning positively.
“The process is going normally and we do not have any major problems. We do not have a system that is failing; it is functioning, but there are also some problems. Even the concerns of political parties are sporadic. We are verifying the solutions to the problems that have arisen. However, we must say that the system is functioning and the concerns are such that they do not question the integrity of the process. This first experience of ours is several times better than that of countries with a tradition in this process, but it seems that the problems attract more attention than the positive evaluation of the process”, Celibashi stated./a.f/r.e/p.s./
