From today, the political parties that supported the opposition protest led by PD leader Lulzim Basha since February 18, will have a week to register their candidate lists at the Central Election Commission (KQZ).
According to the McAllister+ agreement, political parties will have until May 26 to register.
As Exit explained previously, the absence of pre-electoral coalition meant that parties with no representation in Parliament had to gather 5,000 signatures in order to register at the KQZ. An additional burden was that parties oriented at ethnic minorities, such as MEGA, were obliged to register candidates in all voting regions, in spite of having local support in specific parts of the country.
This unexpected administrative burden on smaller parties, which previously could get a “free ride” within large pre-electoral coalitions, caused a drop from 45 registered parties to 15 which actually managed to gather the necessary signatures and candidates.
A similar scenario is now expected to repeat itself with the opposition parties. On April 10, 23 opposition parties, including the PD failed to register at the KQZ. Only the Environmentalist Agrarian Party (PAA) of Agron Duka had registered itself prior to Basha announcing the boycott, and requested deregistration. The KQZ, however, never reviewed that request. Later, former PS deputy Eduart Ndocaj joined the opposition with his Albanian Demo-Christian Unity Party (PBDKSh). This makes a total of 25 parties affiliated with the opposition protest that now have to register.
Of those 25 parties, only the Basha’s Democratic Party (PD), Vangjel Dule’s Union for Human Rights Party (PBDNj), and Fatmir Mediu’s Republican Party (PR) have seats in Parliament. This means that, if registered, all other 22 opposition parties will need to gather 5,000 signatures and compile candidate lists for all regions within a week.
In an interview with Ylli Rakipi yesterday, outgoing Minister of Justice Petrit Vasili, the new leader of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) already called the prohibition on pre-electoral coalitions “anti-constitutional.”
