The leader of the Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, met this Monday with
the co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe, Jonathan Evans, Andrei Hunko, Bas Klein, deputy Chairman of the
Secretariat of the Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe, and Delphine Freymann, Secretary of the Monitoring
Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Basha told the co-rapporteurs that this process has placed Albania in the list of countries that cannot realize free and fair elections.
The DP leader mentioned that people with criminal records had been running for the majority. According to Basha, there have been pressure against the voters, the public administration employees and organized crime money was used to buy votes.
“Gangs tied with the government acted as paramilitary units to threaten, scare and violate the candidates, the activists and voters in front of the police, who did not take any measure”, says the communication of the DP.
“The opposition and the media have facts about thousands of cases when the ID cards have been falsified, by enabling the voting of people who are not in Albania”.
Basha spoke about “an extraordinary pressure used by the government against the media. He mentioned the case of the Mayor of Elbasan, Qazim Sejdini, who threatened journalists with their jobs. He mentioned the closing of a TV that reported the falsification of ID cards a few days before the elections, and when a reporter had been taken under custody after writing on Facebook against the candidate of the majority”.
“For the first time in 25 years, we have had this unprecedented, anti-democratic and anti-European case, when voters were threatened by the government leaders that if they would vote for the opposition, they would have no food and no water”, Basha declared.
The opposition leader declared that in these elections there was a massive vote purchase with money coming from corruption and the organized crime, a fact that was mentioned as a concern by the official reports of international observers.
Basha underlined that for the first time in 25 years, democracy is being hit very hard, which culminated with the destruction of free and fair elections. “Albania is in a difficult crossroad today”, Basha declared. “The DP is determined to not allow steps back, and reestablish the democratic standards of the rule of law”.
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