Berisha: Contested ballots are valid

In a press conference, Berisha declared that the clashes happened after the absurd declarations released by the Socialist Party leader who announced victory without the final result.

“If the voting process and the vote counting process all over the country did not have the slightest conflict, in Tirana it was the contrary. On May 14th, 11 Tirana Municipal Units ended the vote count and gave a result. This result showed for the moment that the Socialist Leader had won with 10 votes ahead. And this victory of his overturned the result in the last 10 minutes. The vote counting performed by the Central Election Commission is based on something, it is not manipulated. There is no proof that there have been manipulations”, Berisha declared.

According to the Head of the Government, although the Albanian law does not authorize CEC to announce the official result, the vote counting technology gives an automatic result simply by following the counting process.

“This result has never been disputed by anyone. This result has been announced by the Central Election Commission on TV as a preliminary result, but not official, because the law does not give them this authority. The official result will be announced after all complaints will be scrutinized. This law has been approved by the Socialist Party in an agreement with the Democratic Party”, Berisha declared.

The Prime Minister underlined that different to the Socialist candidate who announced victory without having a result, the Democratic Party candidate declared that he would wait the ending of the process.

Berisha emphasized that if Rama would result winner with the current recount, the Democratic Party will congratulate him. The Head of the Government added that the contested votes are totally regular, because there is no element that can make them invalid, therefore they must be all counted.

“The ballot boxes had 300 contested votes, and unfortunately, they were considered as such the same way when the Zonal Election Commissions were headed by socialists or democrats. These votes deserve to be fully evaluated”, Berisha declared.

He also added that the majority will accept any result that will come out of the contested votes.

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