The Parliamentary Committee for Legal Affairs has approved changes in the Albanian Constitution to implement a proportional regional electoral system with open lists, which will effectively avoid pre-electoral coalitions.
The amendment proposed by the parliamentary opposition and supported by the Socialist majority, stipulates that voters will elect their favorite MPs from an open list of candidates, instead of a closed list of MP candidates presented by the party leadership.
Banning of pre-election coalitions and changing of electoral threshold according to the request of parliamentary opposition, also supported by the Socialist majority, will be made at a later stage by changing the Electoral Code.
The parliamentary opposition had requested a 5 percent threshold of votes in elections for a party to enter the parliament, instead of the current 3 percent. However, they later changed their request to 2 percent, and then demanded that the threshold be determined according to the number of voters in each region.
Socialist MP Klotilda Ferhati said they will decide on the details later.
The changes approved today will need to get two-third (94) of votes in parliament.
