Socialist draft revealed

One of the planners of this draft project, Socialist MP Ditmir Bushati, illustrates it with the joint declaration of Ashton and Fule on July 2011, addressing to the recommendations of the commission, especially the 12 key priorities.

The first priority identified by the Opinion of the European Commission, for Albania’s EU candidate status, underlines: “Guaranteeing the functionality of the Parliament, based on political and constructive dialogue between all parties”.

For realizing this priority, the Socialists propose four amends of the Parliament Regulation.

The four drafts for the Parliamentary Regulation amends:

-Secret voting;
-Basic rights for the opposition
-Delegating the Parliament attributes to other instances
-Transparency of the Parliament budget activity

According to the opposition, the amend of the Parliamentary Regulation without the opposition’s consent eliminates the secret voting for discharging constitutional members, such as the Constitutional Court, the General Prosecution etc. The Socialists propose that the voting for each constitutional member should be in secrecy.

Another Parliamentary reform for the Socialist Party is the return of the 60 minute debate in the beginning of every session, and not in the end. The Parliament Regulation has not a clear normative framework for the relations of the Commissions and the MPs with other institutions and interest groups. The opposition demanded clear definitions, without equivocation, in order to avoid any administrative obstacle for the lawmaking process and the Parliamentary supervision.

In the last 20 years, the pluralist Parliament has implemented an unwritten norm, which is that when the Prime Minister was speaking, the opposition leader had also the right to comment. Since March 2011, this right of the opposition has been completely denied. In the second phase of the Parliamentary reform, the SP will propose the establishment of a joint Parliamentary commission, with majority from the ruling MPs, for addressing all deficiencies that were noted by the EU.

Topalli warns a possible rejection of Opposition’s reform proposition

The Propositions of the Socialist Party for changing the Parliament
Regulation might not be accepted by the majority, especially for
returning the law of secret voting of the Presidential Decrees and for
the nomination of the Constitutional Court members and the Supreme
Court.

The majority has not given an official stance yet, since the
propositions of the opposition are not official, but during an interview
for the Voice of America, Mrs. Topalli strongly defended this
Parliamentary Regulation clause that the Socialists want to nullify. She
said that it has the highest transparency standard, also used in the US
Congress.

“In the US Congress it is the transparency principle that prevails. In
the US Congress it is unimaginable to vote in secrecy, because it is
unthinkable to have a secret voting. The MPs must be responsible for
their actions in front of the citizens who elected them. Not only the
judges are elected with this kind of transparency, but the Parliament
Speaker is also elected with nominal vote. The only amend that we have
made, is the one that has brought a higher standard, not only for the
transparent nomination, as mentioned in the US Senate, but also for the
fact that the topics outside the daily schedule cannot be more of a
priority than the agenda of the reforms that the Albanians need”,
Topalli declared.

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