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OP-ED

Open listings, closed interests

Politiko 2024-07-27 21:43:37

Alfred Lela

The vote on Friday evening on a mini-election package, which paves the way for the Albanian diaspora to vote, erased three conditional decisions against the Parliament of the Constitutional Court.

As always, what is egalitarian does not stand out; traces of inequality always do (its gap sells well). This time, these traces were found in the open/closed lists. The mini-election package concluded a decision of the Constitutional Court that required the opening of the list of MP candidates to the extent of 2/3. At first glance, thanks to the noise, the ratio is reversed: it looks like 2/3 are closed, and the rest are open. It is not so, but such is the noise created, mainly by small political actors, who, in using populism (the people elect all and solve all), hope for two things.

First, to damage the main opposition, the Democratic Party (with the Chairman in prison), and second, to appear as the people's only believers. This is done with the tactical and propagandistic goal of 'the big two are the evil, we are the salvation'. But if you see the striking edge of their discourse, it cuts the opposition and does not bother the government at all.

According to such voices, it is the opposition that betrayed the people; it is the Democratic Party that sold the Electoral Reform, and so on, inaccuracies marinated in malice.

The Democratic Party has been and remains clear in the fight for free elections (without them there is no solution!). It has been and remains clear regarding the OSCE-ODHIR recommendations, where and only where the Electoral Reform should be supported. Which has not happened, has not been done, and apparently will not be done. This is because the majority does not have the will. The proposals of the experts of the Democratic Party have been rejected. Faced with the decisions of the Constitutional Court, the government has accepted only those that were the focus of these decisions.

Under these conditions, the Democratic Party should either not vote for the concerns it has raised - firstly, the vote of the Diaspora - giving the majority a chance to tell the Constitutionalist that it cannot pass them, pointing the finger at the opposition as an obstacle.

In this case, perhaps the same critics will lament the Democratic Party again. The pretext would be there: it is playing the game of the government, which also does not want the vote of the Diaspora.

The second trap they want DP to fall into is the disproportional division of the open/closed list. Taking Tirana as an example, it is said that DP, according to the rule of closed lists in 1/3, will have 12 safe seats. The math of the last time thus allows the Democrats a maximum of 4 seats, starting from the 16 mandates of 2020. There is a crisis of individual and social trust here. The immobile actors, the frozen arena, the pious government. This kind of discourse helps the majority. Detractors of the opposition recognize the government's scandals but not its contraction. They photograph their anti-DP projection, not the state of things, which are shifting, liquid, and have changed.

In the end, what really creates absurdity in this attitude is that the Democratic Party is asked for more than it has and can give. On the other hand, the government is always asked for less than it could and has vast offerings.

Thus, inverted reports and realities create political schizophrenia. Such situations always favor the one with many hands to control things. Those with only one thing in hand, to bring the alarm to the government, do the opposite.