'One address is enough', SP-PD reach an agreement on the vote of the diaspora

The most important changes are related to two decisions of the Constitutional Court, enabling the Diaspora to vote for the first time in elections and removing the "first" factor in the calculation of the mandate of the deputy from the opening of multi-name lists of political parties.

The parliamentary group of the SP announced on Monday that the chairman of this group, Bledi Çuçi, had informed the deputies about the possibility of reaching a political agreement within this week and voting on the package of changes in the last plenary session of this session, on Friday.

"The proposals of the Dialogue Group are still in the discussion stage at the political level and if there is an agreement, then these proposals will be presented to the session on Friday," Çuçi is quoted as saying at the meeting.

The democratic negotiator, Oerd Bylykbashi, referred to the public statement given on Friday after the last meeting with the socialist negotiator, Damian Gjiknuri, after which both admitted that they have reached an agreement on the vote of immigrants.

On Friday, the two political negotiators announced that they have found a suitable solution to enable the Diaspora vote, a legal formula that will enable any Albanian with a valid residential address abroad to vote.

Gjiknuri said that it is about several categories of citizens who for one reason or another live for a certain time abroad. "There will also be diplomats, soldiers or other people who live in different countries and who reside at a certain address," he clarified.

While Bylykbashi added that there will be no separation between those who are in illegal immigration and those who are legally registered abroad.

"Anyone who is outside Albania, for an important reason, especially immigration, but has minimal documentation and an address with which they can communicate with the Central Election Commission, will have the right to vote," he emphasized to the media.

However, the group of experts tasked with putting the political agreement on paper still does not have a final document because there is still no agreement on the other issue, that of calculating the time.

"We are still working," DP expert Ivi Kaso told BIRN.

Gjiknuri and Bylykbashi showed that they are approaching a pact by adapting the formula of the lists of candidates in the Electoral Code to the constitutional formulation, where 1/3 of the list of candidates is not closed and predetermined by the party leaders as "safe" and the rest should be free, whoever gets the most votes is on the winning list.

"So one part is closed as provided by the Constitution and the other part is an open list without threshold and without time," explained Gjiknuri, referring to this formula as a DP proposal. While Bylykbashi said that PD would seek "the maximum extent of the preferential voting of voters".

The expected pact between the majority and the largest opposition party led by ex-prime minister Sali Berisha, currently under house arrest, was attacked on Monday by former DP chairman Lulzim Basha, who controlled a group of opposition MPs. .

He accused the parties of a "dirty bargain" to keep closed lists of candidates, contrary to what the Constitutional Court has ordered. Reporter.al