Electoral College rejects “ZEC 49” case

26/05/2011 15:55

The first session of appeals for Tirana mayoral race gathered a great
number of lawyers and politicians at the narrow Electoral College room.(Update)

Eno Bushi, Arian Salati and Eridian Salianji were there for the Socialist Party, and also one coauthor of the current Electoral Code, SP Deputy Damian Gjiknuri.

From the Democratic Party there was Ivi Kaso, technical coauthor of the Electoral Code; Oerd Bylykbashi, former OSCE specialist for election matters, currently director of Prime Minister’s cabinet, today simply participating in the meeting; deputies Eduard Halimi, former State’s Advocate and Ilir Rusmali, former Minister of Justice and Chairman of Parliamentary Commission on Laws.

Together with them there were lawyers from the Central Election Commission. The Socialist Party asked the Electoral College to oblige CEC to announce the summary report table for Municipal Unit 5, based on the summary report tables provided by the ballot counting groups.

SP asked Electoral College to force CEC to also announce the general summary table for Tirana based on Zonal Election Commissions summary report tables. CEC argued that they had already done this, but the Socialist Party replied that CEC did this only after recounting miscast ballots.

The Electoral College decided to reject this case. In other words, for the Electoral College this case does not exist at all.

The Electoral College stopped only at the procedural aspect of the case, for the request of the Socialist Party to force CEC announce the general summary, when CEC had already done that.

But the Electoral College did not review the core of the case, if the procedure that CEC followed for compiling these summary tables was legal or in violation with the law.

“The Electoral College had the conditions to give a decision even today, because our arguments were clear and there was no counterargument. The College did not invest in the core of the problem”, Gjiknuri declared.

The Electoral College will review this Friday the other request made by the Socialist Party, which has requested the invalidity of the procedure undertaken by the Central Election Commission.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Party filed at the Central Election Commission an appeal for the Tirana general summary table, which CEC announced.

In other words, the legal battle for Tirana has just started.

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