Kamëz Part 2

Kamëz is a poor area, lacking in infrastructure. Normally, this would lead you to expect parties of the left to have a strong presence. Yet in Kamëz it is the ostensibly right wing Democratic Party that is dominant.

The local government elections of 2003 resulted in DP control of the municipality and a DP mayor, Agim Canaj. Canaj is not running in this election since he has had some difficulties in the past few years.

He was dismissed from his post in 2005 following allegations of involvement in issuing false birth certificates and failing to clear duplicate entries from the voters' list. The Constitutional Court later reinstated him.

The DP candidate this time round is Xhelal Mziu. Unfortunately for the DP his nomination resulted in a split in the party and the nomination of a disgruntled DP member, Remzi Tota, as an independent candidate.

Tota's registration was initially turned down by the Local Government Election Commission and by the Central Election Commission. These decisions were overturned by the Electoral College and Tota was allowed to stand.

The third candidate for mayor is Sul Cara from the LSI.

And so we found ourselves on Sunday morning standing in a schoolyard waiting for the Voting Centre Commission (VCC) to turn up and set up. Over the course of the day we visited ten voting centres and the Municipal building, where birth certificates were being issues to those who lacked proper documentation.

Without identifying particular voting centres, here are some broad impressions formed from our observations throughout the day.

• Many of the people who made up the VCC's - 13 individuals plus a secretary for each voting centre - clearly had no idea of the procedures. Perhaps they never saw any documentation explaining these, or perhaps they saw some but never read it.
• Either way, many of them did not know what the procedures were and appeared not to care whether they were followed or not. None of the centres we visited were free of irregularities.
• All voters should have been marked with indelible ink - some were not; one man wiped it off and refused to have it reapplied but was still allowed to vote.
• All voters should have signed the voters list - some did not. In a number of cases one member of a family group signed for all of them. No attempt was made to prevent this.
• Birth certificates and supporting documents should have been retained - this rarely happened.
• People were allowed to vote without the appropriate ID - one young man produced a driving licence, a valid supporting document but not acceptable on its own.
• Families went to voting booths together, often in pairs, sometimes in threes. This happened at every voting centre we visited and no effort was made to prevent it.

Having noted all of this, I should say that at only one of the ten voting centres we visited did there appear to be anything suspicious happening. For the most part the procedural failings were down to incompetence or indifference.

At our final voting centre the power had gone off and we watched as the VCC attempted to process the last few voters by the light of a couple of small candles. One member stood in front of the voting booths and shone the torch on his mobile phone over the top so that people could read the ballot papers.

The power came on in time for the closing procedures, but the two underpowered light bulbs in the classroom provided even less light than the candles which were passed along the table as everyone signed the records.

The ballot boxes were then taken from the voting centre to the counting centre accompanied by a police officer. It was at this point that the process degenerated into chaos.

At the counting centre, two long lines formed, both focused on one small door which was the only means of access into the building. It was taking ten minutes for the ballot boxes from each voting centre to be processed - there were 51 voting centres.

There were at least 30 police officers present between those on duty at the counting centre and those accompanying the boxes. They conspicuously failed to manage the growing crowd outside the building, and actually contributed to the problem by failing to ensure that both lines were treated fairly in managing entry to the building.

By the time we left, ninety minutes later, the two lines had become a single crowd pushing and shoving to get to the door. It seemed to me that the police were doing as much pushing and shoving as everyone else.

We made it home about 16 hours after we left on Sunday morning. I still don't know the outcome in Kamëz . I haven't heard it mentioned on the local television channels and it has not yet appeared on the KQZ results board. If anyone knows, I would love to hear.

There will be one more post to come on this subject, with some personal reflections on the experience. Following that, those of you who are sick of politics will be pleased to hear, normal service will be resumed.