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The
observers rights shall not be restricted
26.01.2005
Albanian Helsinki Committee (AHC) and Society ‘For Democratic
Culture” (SDC) after being acquainted with the changes in the Electoral Code
specifically to the law Nr. 9341, dated 10.1.2005, they both
welcomed them. These changes are a move forward to the further
improvement of our electoral legislation aiming at guaranteeing
free, fair and uncontested elections.
The
preliminary study of these changes makes us think that there are
still some incomplete and inaccurate wording and also certain
provisions in contradiction with the Constitution. Hopefully
they will be revised in the future.
Despite
this fact, AHC and SDC consider worthy to make public their
attitude about one issue that is related to the observers’ rights
in the electoral process.
With
the aforementioned law there have been changes to the article 18 of
the Electoral Code entitled “The right to appoint observers”. In
the 4th item of the unchanged article 18 it was stated
that the request of the Albanian observers for accreditation is
submitted to CEC not later than 15 days prior to the election date.
This means that the request should be submitted to CEC let’s say
3-4 months prior to the election date, whereas according to the
changes made to the above article the request shall be submitted to
CEC not earlier than 45 days prior to the election day.
This
change obviously restricts the monitoring of the election from
Albanian observers. They have access to only monitor the electoral
campaign, voting and the counting of ballots.
AHC
and SDC consider that before making this change it was necessary to
revise article 19 of the Code that has not been changed and wherein
the observers were entitled ‘to unrestrictedly monitor all the
aspects of the preparations of the electioneering’. This shows
that the transformed article 18 as regards this issue is in
contradiction with the existing article 19, letter ‘a” of the
same Code.
AHC
and SDC share the opinion that the Parliament prior to adopting this
change it should have considered OSCE/ODIHR and Venice Commission
(April 2004) recommendations where it is stated that “the
observer organizations shall be involved in the early stages of the
process with the aim of monitoring all the electoral processes” (see
recommendations, Albanian translation, page 16)
AHC
and SDC suggest to the Parliament to amend the change made to the
article 18 of the Electoral Code and not to restrict the
observers’ rights, such restriction do not contribute to the
overall and qualitative monitoring of the elections.
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