Skip to main content

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.
Paulo Gama said…
HI FROM PORTUGAL
GREAT BLOG
VISIT ME ON MY BLOG TOO
BEST REGARDS
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!

Popular posts from this blog

Dy Rame Per Tirane

I was watching Top Channel last night, first the news, then Fiks Fare. According to them Tirana's citizens now have a choice not only between Rama and Olldashi, but also between Rama and Rama. A minor right-wing faction, Parti 'Balli Kombetar' , submitted papers to the election authorities registering their candidate, Akile Rama. The people on Fiks Fare got hold of the papers and sent a reporter and camera team to the address listed for Mr A Rama. After much ringing of the bell the gate was reluctantly opened by a middle-aged woman who refused to speak to the reporter and tried to close the gate on her. Back in the studio Saimiri and Doctori - the two presenters of Fiks Fare - revealed that Mr Akile Rama was 73 years old, in hospital, and did not know he was now a candidate for mayor. They also compared two documents - the papers submitted on his behalf, and a genuine document he had signed. The signatures were not even remotely similar. There was an interview with the lea

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Guide Turistike

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council , the future is bright for Albania. The Council ranks Albania ninth out of 174 countries for tourism growth over the next ten years. A summary of the Council's report is available, as is the full report complete with many pages of graphs, charts and spreadsheets. This summer I have seen a number of tourists on the streets of Tirana. Some of them may well be Albanian expats, or people of Albanian descent returning home to visit family, but others are genuine 'foreigners'. Judging from their appearance, they are probably best described as 'independent travellers' - the kind of people who are not interested in luxury hotels or crowded beaches. This is a good start, but independent travellers are not the kind of big spenders that the tourist industry likes. In the longer term, if Albania wants to bring in the kind of free-spending tourists who currently holiday in Croatia or Slovenia, there will have to be a huge invest