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President Bajram Begaj has decreed changes to the Electoral Code.
President Bajram Begaj has decreed the new changes in the Electoral Code, which were approved in the Assembly on July 26 after reaching a bargain between the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party in the Electoral Reform Commission.
The publication in the official notebook and their entry into force is now awaited.
Begaj said that the changes are the result of the position-opposition agreement in implementation of the decisions of the Constitutional Court. The President said that Vota e disapora is a historic development for the elections in Albania.
Begaj also appealed to the responsible institutions that the vote from abroad be implemented in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Also, Begaj has added that criticisms of the legal mechanization of preferential voting start from the legitimate goal of democratizing this mechanism more.
"The President of the Republic announced today the law no. 81/2024, "On some additions and changes to the law no. 10 019, dated 29.12.2008, "The Electoral Code of the Republic of Albania", as amended".
This law, which received wide parliamentary support, is the result of discussions and an agreement between the position and the opposition for the implementation of the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which had repealed some provisions of the Electoral Code.
Parliamentary cooperation, as well as accountability and respect for the principle of constitutionality and the rule of law are political and legal values of a genuine democratic system, which deserve to be cultivated and multiplied in the Albanian institutional practice.
Among other things, this law establishes the framework for voting from abroad, which constitutes a historic development for elections in Albania. The President of the Republic supports and encourages the institutions in charge to assign absolute priority to the measures and preparations to implement voting from abroad in the upcoming parliamentary elections and to transform this procedure into a complete success story.
The debate about the content of the special provisions of this law was closely followed by the President of the Republic. The law was also examined in the light of this debate. The President of the Republic states that the criticism of the legal mechanization of preferential voting starts from the legitimate goal of democratizing this mechanism more.
The existence of two alternative forms that regulate the entry into parliament, (entry due to ranking on the list and entry due to preferential vote), is defined in point 3 of Article 64 of the Constitution. The provision of this article has passed the test of constitutionality with decision no. 28 of 2021 of the Constitutional Court, which has not noticed a violation of equality before the law for this reason.
The Constitutional Court has considered as a disproportionate limitation the establishment of the early voting mechanism to the extent that the 2020 law had. The new amendments have removed the early mechanization and have accepted the quantitative division established by the provision of the Constitution, according to which "the election law guarantees that voting preferring to undergo no less than two-thirds of the plural list and to ensure gender representation". Keeping the ratio at the upper limit of this provision leaves no room to debate the constitutionality of a criterion that has been established by the Constitution itself.
If the preferential vote should follow this report, or should it be more moderate, within the margin allowed by the Constitution, this is a matter of political and legal visions and compromises, for which the President of the Republic has no say and cannot take a stand, otherwise would act contrary to the principle of separation of powers", said Begaj.
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