Minor officials against the president
Voting commissions abandon their duties. Candidate registration is at risk
The first thing everyone—not only politicians and the formations they belong to or lead—asked of the state and of those who, more than anyone else, are entrusted with the responsibility of administering it in connection with the elections, was a guarantee that they would be normal.
In particular, after the upheaval that shook the situation in the country, especially after the May 26 elections, it rightly fostered the correct view that this normality is needed more by the government than by the opposition. Not only to avoid deepening the left’s justified right to raise its voice in complaint and to reaffirm, on the basis of new evidence, the manipulation, irregularities and denigration—all of them included in the term abnormality—but also to demonstrate its real experience, which, even if it does not reach the same levels as on May 26, is nevertheless, for reasons that are easy to imagine, all the more valuable to document again. The presidential guarantee of normal elections, given at a moment eagerly awaited by all those who sincerely aspired to this guarantee, can certainly not be denigrated or treated as an electoral joke. Unfortunately, it is being treated as such by minor officials who still arrogate to themselves the right to mock laws decreed by those who themselves violate them, and who are apparently not even afraid of whatever kind of guarantee, or of the severe legal sanctions. Yesterday’s case involving the electoral commissions in the Tirana district, whose consequences forced the leadership of the Tirana Branch, as well as senior PRSH officials, to deal with the matter until late into the night, is perhaps the first precedent for the legal possibility of applying the punishment that the Electoral Law, certified by the President of the Republic himself, prescribes for those who boycott the commissions. It is true that this law provides for this punishment for those who boycott the vote-counting process, but the strange “disappearance” of commissioners in almost all the municipalities of Tirana district is no less consequential; nor is the reduction of the District Commission to just two members, precisely on the last day—and even in the final hours—of the legal deadline for registering candidates. In addition, this could jeopardize the possibility of registering candidacies on time (which could also block their exclusion from the elections); and, on top of this, there is the unjustified inaction of the Central Election Commission. The strange “bravery” of minor officials against the guarantees also given by the President himself—may there also be a guarantee that this anti-presidential “rebellion” will be restrained—along with the dispelling of doubts about the normality of the elections.