A People's Advocate without consensus, how Endrit Shabani was elected with the votes of the Socialist Party

In a marathon session filled with political debates, the Parliament last night elected Endrit Shabani as the new People's Advocate with 85 votes in favor .

His election was accompanied by heated debates and opposition MPs leaving the chamber. Even though it was late, Prime Minister Edi Rama, who has now started to appear rarely in parliamentary sessions, was present during the vote. 

Procedures
While the agenda included voting on the six candidacies previously approved by the Laws Committee, the Democratic Party requested that the item be removed from the discussion, arguing that the procedure had been violated.

The opposition claimed that the candidacies no longer had valid support, as the DP had officially announced the withdrawal of signatures for all names, including Endrit Shaban himself.

However, the majority rejected the request, arguing that the signatures had been filed according to the regulation and that their withdrawal after submission had no effect on the termination of the procedure.

Thus, the ongoing clash led to the removal of the DP deputies from the session, paving the way for voting without their presence.

Endrit Shabani, a divisive figure

Endri Shabani, former leader of the civic movement "Nisma Thurje", was among the six candidates approved by the Laws Committee to be voted on in the session. Initially, he also had the signatures of opposition MPs, but then the DP withdrew them, arguing that the process had deviated from the consensus required for this institution.

DP leader Sali Berisha accused the majority yesterday of having “predestined the winner” and that the Laws Committee had allowed candidacies that, according to him, no longer had real support. He said Shabani had close ties to Prime Minister Edi Rama and that the majority had acted unilaterally to advance his election.

"I'm not saying that Endri Shabani didn't get the signatures. He got them during a period when he supported Florian Binaj, because I can't say that it wasn't a complete moral coalition of all political forces."

But then a series of problems emerged that proved that the person who had that vocabulary as an opposition member was not only that, but was a person with complete ties to Edi Rama.

The DP parliamentary group sent a letter to the Assembly informing it that it was withdrawing every signature for every candidate.

"And this decision of the Laws Commission, surprisingly, was rejected by the majority without any decision, just so as not to lose signatures for Endrin Shaban,"  Berisha told the media. 

In the face of these accusations, the majority defended the position that the process was in accordance with the regulations and that the Assembly should once and for all close the vacuum created in the institution. According to them, the DP could not withdraw the signatures retroactively and therefore the candidacies remained valid.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Party chose not to file any official candidacies, deliberately leaving the situation in the hands of the opposition. 

Shabani's election comes after three years of stalemate, during which the institution was led by Erinda Ballanca beyond her mandate, due to a lack of consensus between political parties. S.GJ