CEC meeting continues, awaiting result
25/06/2011 19:25
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The Central Election Commission meeting started around 18:00. This
meeting will be finalized with the announcement of Tirana’s new Mayor.
Before approving the results, political parties’ representatives have
given their arguments. SP legal representatives opposed the result by
listing a series of violations that were noted during the vote counting
process. Democratic Party representatives defended the procedure and the
outcome of the counting process at CEC premises.
Earlier the day it was discovered the draft-project that is being discussed in the meeting. The decision provides that the approval of the result must be taken with simple voting, which would open way to another saga of appeals.
The draft-project is is accompanied by the summary tables of 485 voting centers in 11 Zonal Electoral Commissions (ZEC) for Tirana, and the summary tables of these 11 ZECs, all of which changed after the second count of miscast ballots. The procedure started one week ago, by order of the Electoral College.
The new numbers declare the Democratic Party candidate as winner, with a difference of 93 votes. This CEC decision must be approved with a simple majority by all present CEC members.
But another version does not exclude the possibility of requiring a qualified majority, based on article 24.1.b of the Electoral Code, which says that “Election results are considered as approved when not less than 5 members of the Central Election Commission vote in favor of the decisions for accepting the complaints that appeal against the decision for approving the summary table of the electoral area”.
In other words, if the argument for requiring a qualified decision will be treated, the parties will argue that this decision is a continuity of an appeal that was returned at CEC by the Electoral College, and as such, it requires a qualified majority. Those who will support the simple majority will argue that exactly this decision of the Electoral College nullifies the previous decision no 711 that was taken by CEC for the summary table of Tirana Municipality elections, about which the appeal exists.
By nullifying the CEC decision, the Electoral College obliges CEC to announce another decision. The new decision for the announcement of the new winner by CEC requires a simple majority. A similar example is the Durres ZECm which announced the winner for this city. Surely, these are the versions that remain within the space allowed by law, but the decision will be announced this evening.
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