Albania Election Commissioners Jailed for Fraud

Court jails five former commissioners for having falsified votes in the 2009 general election.

Besar Likmeta

Tirana

Election officials seal ballot boxes at the village of Lazarat near Gjirokastra during Albanian parliamentary elections | Photo by : OSCE/Ann Larsson

Five election commissioners from the ruling Democratic Party in the 2009 parliamentary elections in the village of Ruzhdie in Southern Albania, were sentenced to seven months’ prison each and fined 450,000 lek (€3,190) on Monday for election fraud.

Three other opposition commissioners were also sentenced by the court in the city of Fier to pay fines of 150,000 lek (€1,070) for abandoning a polling station on polling day.



The case of the village of Ruzhdie was the highest profile case of election fraud from the June 2009 disputed parliamentary elections, which the Democratic Party of Prime Minister Sali Berisha narrowly won.

An investigation found that the Democratic Party commissioners falsified signatures and filled in ballots for hundreds of voters that were not present on polling day.
A good part of the voters whose ballots were filled in were residing outside the country as economic migrants in Greece.



The votes cast in Ruzhdie during the 2009 poll were not included in the final tally for the electoral zone of Fier, after a court challenge from the opposition resulted in them being disqualified as invalid.



The Socialists have repeatedly argued that similar cases of fraud were widespread during the 2009 elections while the ruling Democrats maintain that the situation at the polling station at the village was unique and only occurred after opposition commissioners abandoned the polling station.

Berisha’s Democrats and the Socialist opposition, headed by Tirana mayor Edi Rama, have been locked in a power struggle since the end of the June 2009 parliamentary elections.



The Socialists allege that Berisha stole the elections through voter fraud while the Democrats reject the accusations and maintains the polls were the best the country has held.