OSCE report, Kaso: SPAK to investigate and clarify the election farce of May 14

The secretary for electoral affairs in DP, Ivi Kaso, in a statement to the media, welcomed the final report of OSCE-ODIHIR for the May 14 elections.

Among other things, Kaso called on SPAK to investigate and clarify what he called an election farce. So he said that this report was the blackest in 30 years.

Ivi Kasos' full statement:

The Democratic Party welcomes the final report of the OSCE-ODIHR for the elections of May 14, 2023 and finds it a serious real assessment of the dramatic state of the elections in Albania, which in most of the concluding points agreed with our findings presented in the Black Book of Farce election on May 14, published in Albanian and English.

For the first time after many years, the first priority recommendation is not the future electoral reform that must be done, but the call to the institutions to investigate and punish the electoral crimes of this process, as we have repeatedly stated in this farce electoral crime turned into a vote and the vote turned into a crime.

The latest OSCE-ODIHR report is the darkest in 30 years. The only one that compares to it is the 2001 report.

Edi Rama returned the elections 22 years later, when the lowest election standards were recorded in Albania after the 90s.

Since 2013, free elections are no longer held in Albania, and this is due to Edi Rama's fault.

Focusing on the extreme inequality in the recent elections, the report emphasizes that the Government has massively abused state power and resources in favor of its candidates, breaking the equality of the race required by OSCE standards.

The report denounces the CEC as a completely caught body that has opened the door and allowed the government to abuse and violate the law that the Central Commission has the duty to guarantee. Priority recommendation no. 1: Those responsible who have violated equality in elections by abusing state resources and power to gain electoral advantage must be investigated.

The report publicly denounces the terror exercised against voters in various illegal forms of pressure. He rightly states that pressure has been put on voters, including on the administration with jobs, state services and by threatening the Prime Minister that their funding will be cut off if they vote for the opposition. So voters were not free.

The report denounces the massive violation of the secrecy of the vote. The report states that the secrecy of the vote was violated during voting by commissioners or other persons, as well as electronic voting operators, frequently allowing family voting, group voting, voting on behalf of other voters or instructing voters how to vote. to the secret room.

The vote that is not secret is not free!

The report strongly denounces voter control, a feature of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes

The patronage and use of voters' personal data, the report says, used by the SP, was used to control voters en masse. This constitutes a violation of the freedom of voters.

This is how the report stops at denouncing the vote buying industry

Vote buying has been a problem for a long time and has undermined the integrity of the elections, says Priority Recommendation No. 2. It clearly whips those responsible who have done nothing to crack down on this crime. In 2017, the buying and selling of votes became an act of corruption and from 2020 SPAK has the exclusive responsibility to investigate and punish it, but according to ODIHR it appears that nothing has been done.

As the Democratic Party has repeated, the elections were a farce and Edi Rama and his gangs are responsible for their looting and manipulation.

The elections were votes, and Albania has held votes as far as the eye can see, even in the heart of the dictatorship, during the time of Enver Hoxha.

The Democratic Party strongly repeats the message that should be understood by everyone, because it is not about a political force and its fate, but about all Albanians and the future of democracy in the country: there is no election with Edi Rama.

The Democratic Party reiterates the OSCE-ODIHR call for the elections to be investigated and asks the SPAK to immediately start work on disclosing the 2023 electoral farce and discrediting the face of justice.

The involvement of crime in elections, the transformation of the state into a tool of the party in power, the use of the state police as an electoral brush, the failure to guarantee the secrecy of the vote, the intimidation of voters, pensions, salaries and electoral employment, are already things that have been witnessed by all. . Their denial and punishment is a serious violation of public interest, social and constitutional order and the image of justice.

Everyone should understand: without free elections there is no solution!

Finally, the Democratic Party thanks the OSCE ODIHR mission for its work and the objective report related to the electoral farce of May 14, 2023