Diaspora votes affect about 20 seats in the Assembly elections. Which party will also have candidates from the diaspora, gets the votes

Enrollments with the Central Election Commission for Immigrants, who wish to participate in the May 11th elections, were closed on Tuesday. From the beginning of January to date, 234,000 voters were registered from abroad (a process that is performed for the first time), while the other 43,000 were rejected the request for inaccuracies in the documents. Independent experts claimed for Voice of America that votes from outside Albania would affect at least 19 to 20 mandates of the new Assembly.

Independent and experienced experts in observing electoral processes claimed for Voice of America that the voting of Albanians from the outside marks finally achievement, of a standard and a civic right, for the failure of which Albania was distinguished by other countries until yesterday.

The figures also have them both sides of the coin: on the one hand 234,000 external voters are more than twice the initial predictions, but on the other hand they make up only 15-20 percent of Albanian voters living abroad.

The head of the Institute for the Development of Electoral Systems, Kristaq Kume, tells Voice of America that the voter from abroad has another behavior towards the vote and another way of using it.

“The votes of citizens from outside the territory of the country will have a more sensitive effect on distributing seats between entities, especially in those electoral units where the number of seats is tea. In such electoral units, according to the formula that the seats are divided, it sometimes moves with very few votes, with 100 votes, and with 50 votes has passed from one subject to another, ”says Mr. Kume.

In the Coalition for Reforms, Integration and Consolidated Institutions, experts believe that the votes of Albanians living abroad will affect about 19-20 seats of the new Assembly in all 12 counties of the country.

According to the study of this organization, which tells Voice of America Dritan Taulla, the district that will be more affected by external votes is Tirana with 4 seats, Fier with 3 seats, Durres, Elbasan, Vlora, Shkodra with 2 seats, Berat, Korça, Gjirokastra, Lezha with 1 mandate.

« I believe that at these rates the final figure will go around 250,000. Assessing that this process was done for the first time, I believe that it is a achievement that such a high number of Albanians living abroad were registered to vote, say their word and determine who their representatives will be in the Assembly, ”said Mr. Taulla.

Calculations on Albanians from abroad rely on the belief that their voting sheets will be returned, but experts believe that their participation in the elections will increase significantly if political parties will enter the nominal lists of candidates for Diaspora figures, so that they can bring directly to the Albanian Assembly.

It remains to be seen what names will submit political parties, especially in the upper part of the secure lists, says Mr. Kume, but if the names of candidates from the diaspora were announced earlier than the external voter registration, then their number would be much higher.

All parties have made this promise, both the two major parties and the new parties, he said.

« The second factor for me will also be the fact that the political parties will include in their candidate lists, especially in the upper third of the list, candidates from the diaspora. I would vote much more a candidate my fellow citizen in emigration than someone living in Albania. It depends on how political parties will use this factor, ”said Mr. Kume.

Mr. Taulla also tells Voice of America that even in the activists of the creative coalition the idea has always prevailed so that just as the social strata and the votes of immigrants are now not distributed in the general results of large parties, but they focus on their representatives, so that their views in the Assembly are clearly and strongly appeared.

“It remains to be seen the names of the candidates, which will bring political parties until March 12, which is the deadline. The ideal would have been according to the creature for Albanians abroad to have a dedicated representation; So to have their deputies to bring their voices to the Albanian Parliament, ”said Mr. Taulla.

Experts believe that the most favored to get more votes from abroad will be in the polls those parties, which will have more names of candidates from the diaspora. Even later MPs from abroad can create a parliamentary group of the Diaspora, they claimed, but these observations and developments are expected at least a week when the candidate lists of MPs are published.