The Diaspora vote, a reflection of the elections within the country?

Sitting on one of the chairs in Tirana's Olympic Park, Taulant Balla, the political leader of the Socialist Party for the Diaspora, watches a video meme of the opposition leader, Sali Berisha, on his mobile phone. A step below Balla, counting teams open envelopes arriving from different countries of the world with the votes of Albanian emigrants.

The diaspora vote, applied for the first time in Albania, was considered one of the surprises of the May 11 elections, but the first results on Monday afternoon suggest that it may reflect almost the same picture as the elections within the country.

In 9,285 envelopes counted by 5:00 PM on Monday out of 194,889 in total, at just 4 percent of the total, the Socialist Party has an advantage with 55% of the votes, followed by the Democratic Party with 28% and the Nisma Albania Becomes coalition with over 8%.

“Immigrants vote for us because today they feel proud that our flag will fly in the courtyard of the EU,” Balla told BIRN, while seeing no contradiction between the fact that Albanians who have left the country for a better life, while voting for his party, which has been in power for 12 years. Balla dismissed the Democratic Party’s accusations of patronizing the diaspora vote as “party electoral practices.”

On the other side of the large hall built for Olympic sports stands Jozefina Topalli, the political leader of the Democratic Party for the Diaspora. Topalli makes no attempt to hide her disappointment at the trend of emigrant votes against the opposition.

"When Berat came out here with 90% for the SP, I didn't know what to think, this only happened during the time of Enver Hoxha," said Topalli, pointing to the screens in front of him where the votes counted and the results for each district are displayed.

Topalli says that from the first results she understood that the SP has worked hard with the diaspora based on the calculations it has made for mandates in certain districts. “If you look carefully, this voting trend is determining for deputy mandates in some districts such as Berat, Fier, Elbasan, Korça and to some extent Durrës,” she says, expressing surprise at the socialists’ pre-electoral calculations.

Despite the disappointment, Topalli has decided to stay until the end of the vote counting, while paying attention to the vote coming from Greece, contested by her party due to problems with the delivery of the mail.

"When Greece opens, it will be 120 percent for them," says Topalli, claiming that the ballot envelopes were filled out irregularly and that their submission to the CEC was also done without the minutes of the voters' signatures.

The vote counting process for political entities from the diaspora is expected to conclude on Wednesday, while the vote counting for candidates on open lists will start from the beginning after the results for the parties are released.

Jona Josifi, director of the Diaspora vote at the CEC, who became the protagonist of political pressure from the two major parties at the beginning of the process, is monitoring the work of the counters and paraphrases these pressures as part of her job. “I continue my work, I don’t feel intimidated,” she told BIRN.

The diaspora vote is a novelty in these elections after changes to the Electoral Code were made based on a political pact between the majority and the opposition at the end of last year. The administration of the emigrant vote has cost Albanian taxpayers several million euros, but this voting process, according to Balla, is not proper.

“This vote could have been done electronically from the moment they registered to vote,” Balla says, adding that the bipartisan counting process also creates unnecessary delays. “Stalinist method,” he added of the administration of the process with party-appointed counters, stressing that it is time for the election administration to be depoliticized./ BIRN