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Pace Notes

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is the latest institution to express concern about the state of political life in Albania. The Council adopted a draft resolution on Albania last Wednesday which addressed, among other things, democratic reform. These are some excerpts from the resolution:
4. Albanian political life is plagued by confrontation and obstructionism. The poor political climate is delaying reforms, in particular in the field of election legislation and the media, which are urgently required in view of the forthcoming local elections scheduled for January 2007. A bi-partisan agreement reached on 30 August 2006 with international assistance was warmly welcomed but has yet to be implemented.

7.1.1. The Assembly believes that the Albanian authorities should in particular continue to improve the accuracy of civil registers and voters' lists and develop a uniform system of addresses for buildings; new identity documents should be introduced; the excessive role of political parties in electoral procedures should be limited and the election administration should be reviewed.

7.4.3. The Assembly attaches great importance to the forthcoming local elections which it considers a major test for the capacity of the Albanian authorities to organise free and fair elections. Given the failure to adopt a comprehensive electoral reform in line with recommendations made previously by international observers, some priority issues must be addressed in time for the local elections, such as recommendations regarding the voters' lists, election administration, vote counting, tabulation and appeals procedures

Comments

Anonymous said…
16 years after the end of communism here's the CoE urging Albania to finally get down to the very very basic task of naming their streets and applying logical house numbering because they can't get themselves to do it.
10:33 am
Paulo Gama said…
HI FROM PORTUGAL
GREAT BLOG
VISIT ME ON MY BLOG TOO
BEST REGARDS
12:20 pm
Ll.T. said…
they can't get themselves to do it

Hey Jeroen, take a hike and don't worry about Albania, ok pal. We were doing fine before the CoE was around and we will do fine even without it if there's a need!
4:19 pm
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