Fjori Sinoruka
Tirana BIRN February 25, 202116:34
The authorities look set to renege on their promise to ensure almost 1.2 million Albanians living abroad can vote in legislative elections – with a complete register of diaspora voters nowhere in sight.
Polling station in Tirana, Albania, 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/MALTON DIBRA
With the deadline to set up a register of diaspora voters about to expire next week, Albania has missed its chance to ensure around 1.2 million Albanians living abroad can vote in the next general election, which is due in April.
Changes to the electoral code approved in July last year as part of a wider agreement between the parties foresaw giving Albanians living abroad the right to vote in elections without having to travel back home.
But delays in the adoption of various bylaws and the failure to create a registers of voters in the diaspora mean this is unlikely to be realized.
The final deadline by law to create the diaspora register expires on March 5.
The Election Commissioner at the Central Election Commission, Ilirjan Celibashi, on Thursday admitted the process had hit snags.
“Regarding voting from abroad, unfortunately the process continues to be still without a concrete result,” he said, adding that in theory there is still a chance for another 3,400 Albanians living outside Albania – and who have registered with a government portal declaring their permanent residence – to vote.
Under the electoral code, Albanians registered as permanent resident outside the country have a right to vote in parliamentary elections.
The criterion is registration of permanent residence in the National Registry of Civil Status and to request external voting documentation from the Central Election Commission.
According the Institute of Statistics in 2020, about 1.68 million Albanians live abroad, about 37 per cent of Albanians in total.
Of that 1.68 million, around 1.2 million could have the right to vote.
Around 3.6 million registered voters in the country will choose the 140-seat parliament on April 25.
On January 4, four months before the vote, the Central Election Commission proposed two ways for emigrants to register their addresses through a government portal.
But the public reaction of a group, Diaspora for a Free Albania, on the registration of citizens living outside Albania, has complained of “a deep lack of communication and inter-institutional coordination for the implementation of technical steps, which enable the realization of this constitutional right”.
It drew attention to a lack of voting modality (by mail, email or at diplomatic missions) as well as a lack of diaspora voting guarantee infrastructure.
Experts and diaspora representatives told BIRN they agreed the process had been slow, and the political will to carry it out has been lacking.
“The reasons are mainly technical but also concern a clear lack of political will of the big parties,” Bledar Milaqi, a representative for Diaspora for a Free Albania said.
Listing the problems to BIRN, he mentioned: “lack of concrete deadlines by the CEC to implement the process; the list of normative acts needing approval; [lack of] information about the voting model and counting of votes; and lack of security elements and a proper strategy to realize this constitutional right”. He also stressed the need to adopt certain bylaws before the problems can be addressed.
“The diaspora vote is independent, uncontrollable, it is an oppositional and critical vote – and it also brings a new spirit,” Milaqi noted.
Afrim Krasniqi, head of the Albanian Institute for Political Studies, a think tank, said it was only to be expected that the issue of the diaspora vote would not be dealt with properly at this election.
“Electoral reform has not answered the question of how the diaspora should be represented in political life, or the state’s obligation, from 2018, to create a National Register of the Diaspora – or the technical and administrative measures needed for the CEC to operate outside Albanian territory,” he said.
In Albania’s internal environment, Krasniqi added, parties prefer to address voters who rely on state services, want jobs, receive social assistance or otherwise benefit from daily decisions of the executive.
“These make internal voters dependent on politics,” he told BIRN. He noted that diaspora voters do not depend on the government in the same way – adding that although parties may influence certain diaspora groups, they cannot control the way they vote.
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