Albania’s Socialist Party has submitted two draft laws to parliament that would prevent anyone who worked for State Security (Sigurimi) during Albania’s brutal communist regime from running as a candidate during any government election.
The move comes after the country’s files authority which deals with documents from institutions from that time, implicated former president Ilir Meta as a spy, calling for changes to the law because he had previously been considered clean by another commission and could not be re-examined. Meta denied the claims and filed criminal charges of falsifying documents against the authority, stating it was politically motivated.
Proposals from the ruling party mean that it will be mandatory to verify candidates’ backgrounds for deputies and mayors and to review their certificates of cleanliness- some 30 years after the regime ended.
“A candidate is a citizen who meets the conditions provided for in articles 45 and 69 of the Constitution, for whom the process of verifying the purity of the image is successfully completed, and who is registered as a candidate for deputy, as a candidate for mayor or local councils in the bodies responsible for the administration of the elections,” the draft inclusion to the electoral code states.
In other articles of the draft, the process of verifying the purity of the figure means electoral subjects must request the authority verify them “in relation to the existence of information in documents of the former state security, for purposes of transparency of image purity”.
The other draft law relates to the request of the authority to amend the law “On the Right to Information for the documents of the Former State Security of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania”, giving the right to the authority reassess the certificates of cleanliness issued by the “Mezini” and “Bezhani” commissions. Currently, those assessed by these commissions cannot be reassessed.
Albania is set to go to the polls in June 2023 to elect mayors and regional representatives.
