BIRN: Minister Balluku uses institutional websites as 'walls' for campaign posters

On Thursday morning at 9:56, the Minister of Infrastructure and political leader of the Socialist Party for the Fier region, Belinda Balluku , shared a poster with electoral promises from her Facebook page.

“Within the fourth term. Elbasan bypass. Saranda bypass,” it says in capital letters on a purple background, above photos of machinery at work. The poster adds: “Albania 2030” and “#SocialistParty.”

Two minutes later, the same post was shared by the official page of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy, MEI. In the minutes and hours that followed, other official Facebook and Instagram pages of institutions subordinate to the Ministry headed by Balluku shared the same post.

BIRN found that the electoral poster was shared by the Albanian Road Authority , the Road Transport Task Force, the State Agency for Expropriation and Albgaz , a 100 percent public company under the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. It was also liked by the Civil Aviation Authority and the Fier Memorial Hospital.

The official websites of public institutions under Minister Belinda Balluku are serving as a wall for virtual posters of her electoral campaign, even though the Electoral Code and a regulation of the Central Election Commission categorically prohibit this practice, considering it "use of public resources in support of electoral subjects."

For civil society experts who monitor the use of public administration in the campaign, these posts are made in violation of the legislation and are indicative of the functioning of the "party-state".

"These posts or reposts, even if indirectly, are clearly made for political purposes, as they increase the visibility of the head of the institution on social networks and create the public perception of the unification of the state with a certain political party," said Dhimitër Zguro, an activist with the organization "Civic Stability."

Zguro emphasized that such actions also contradicted a regulation of the State Election Commissioner, but added that they are tolerated because the institutions are not sanctioned.

"Due to the administrative practice of this body, it seems as if institutions are encouraged to post or repost posts with political or electoral content, due to the lack of sanctions, given that the Commissioner is content with deleting the posts, considering the legislator's intention to prohibit the misuse of public resources to be fulfilled," said Zguro.

A representative of the public company "Albgaz", who answered the public contact number, insisted that distributing the poster was a mistake.

"It must have been posted by mistake. Give me time to reconcile," she told this journalist, while a few minutes after the phone conversation, the post was deleted.

Florion Serjani, Media and Communication Advisor to the Minister of Infrastructure and Energy, also told BIRN that the post in question was a mistake and that measures would be taken for it. But he insisted that the other posts, where the campaign was not specifically mentioned, were part of the institutions’ daily work and had been carried out continuously for years.

"They are not obligated to do so, but to keep the institutions' social networks alive, they can post outside their field, of course posts that are within the scope of responsibility of the Ministry of Interior. Ultimately, it is part of their activity to inform the public about the work done," said Serjani.

Despite the electoral poster distributed by the MEI and a number of subordinate institutions, Serjani insisted that on the pages of the "Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy and its subordinate agencies there are no publications that are part of the electoral campaign."

Social media has long become an important tool for electoral propaganda, with candidates and parties spending hundreds of thousands on advertising and having dedicated staff to manage their content. In the battle to dominate social media, the ruling party is given an advantage by the public administration and dozens of state institutions, which serve to distribute, like and comment on electoral messages.

During the electoral campaign period for the May 11 elections , BIRN found that Minister Balluku's posts were widely distributed by subordinate institutions and the Ministry's own website, while being justified as posts related to informing about the institution's affairs.

For Zguron from "Civic Resistance", many of these posts are indirectly related to the campaign and belong to the category of prohibited activities.

"In my assessment, these activities fall under the prohibition related to the indirect use of official accounts for party purposes. Although there is no element in the content of the post description, the purpose of the post is party," Zguro assessed.

The CEC did not respond to requests for comment by the time this article was published. Reporter.al