On Monday, the opposition Democratic Party (PD) will be filing five lawsuits before the Albanian Electoral College asking it to repeat elections, as the party continues to contest the results of the April 25 parliamentary elections.
This decision was made public by PD’s legal representative, Marash Logu, through a Facebook statement released on Sunday.
In his statement, Logu declared that the PD has presented the Central Elections Commission (KQZ) with plenty of proof of vote buying and election rigging on the part of the ruling Socialist Party (PS). According to Logu, the body of evidence presented to KQZ included proof of 10,003 legalization permits, jobs in central administration for more than 13,000 new employees, 63 million euros in salary bonuses, as well as 83,000 thousand invalid ballots, in addition to allegations of data theft that touched more than 910,000 Albanians.
Logu also accused KQZ, and specifically its Complaints and Sanctions Committee (KAS), of behaving “as servants of Edi Rama instead of law enforcement,” and “clos[ing] their eyes to hundreds of facts and evidence, [thus] illegally reject[ing] 171 requests for complete transparency over the April 25 electoral massacre.”
Following its election loss, the PD filed several requests with the Central Elections Commission, demanding that it repeat elections in 9 of the country’s 13 electoral districts. KQZ has already rejected PD’s requests for the districts of Durrës, Berat, Shkodra, Tirana, Gjirokastra, and Vlora. While KQZ conceded the PD and LSI’s request for a recount in Berat, the partial recount of ballots in the district did not change the distribution of seats.
Today, KAS decided to reject PD’s request for repeat elections in Elbasan and Korça.
