On Thursday, Parliament approved a draft resolution to change the composition of the Special Parliamentary Commission on Electoral Reform.
The Electoral Reform Commission had been dysfunctional since the opposition vacated their mandates in February. The Commission was first instituted in 2017, as a result of the McAllister+ agreement between the Rama government and the opposition. The opposition took part in the 2017 parliamentary elections in part based on Rama promise to seriously engage in electoral reform. Already in April 2018 the Albanian Helsinki Committee warned that the Commission had produced no results and time was running out.
The reformatted Commission will have 12 members, co-chaired by former Minister of Energy Damian Gjiknuri (PS) and former PD MP and current leader of the Democratic Group, Rudina Hajdari. Both the majority and the opposition will have 6 seats in the Commission.
The draft resolution passed in Parliament with a majority of 90 votes, with only 1 vote against. It thus appears that the opposition is working with the majority to restart the reform process, in spite of the vacancies left for the majority of opposition seats in Parliament.
