Albania Approves Constitutional Reforms
| 22 April 2008 |
Albania's Parliament
With 117 votes in favor and 15 against the new reforms will also change the way the Head of State gets elected.
The parliament will need only a simple majority to elect the president of the republic in the fourth round of voting, with 71 votes out of an assembly of 140 deputies. This is down from 83 deputies, or three-fifths of the assembly.
The reforms have been backed in a rare agreement between the two largest parties in parliament, the Democratic Party of Prime Minister Sali Berisha and the Socialist Party, headed by the mayor of the capital Tirana, Edi Rama.
"The country today is closer to Europe than before," said Valentina Leskaj, head of the Socialist parliamentary group.
"We are leaving behind once and for all the political crises of the past," she added.
However, the reforms have been widely contested by the smaller parliamentary parties from both the political left and right, who claim the move is to force them out of parliament.
The smaller parties charge that the reforms will swindle representation of the electorate, making the office of the Prime Minister stronger and more authoritarian.
The reforms also entail that Albania's prosecutor general will have a fixed five-year term instead of an unlimited one and parliament will automatically be dissolved and early elections declared if the government loses a confidence vote.
Holding free and fair elections has been an essential requirement for Albania’s closer relations with international institutions. But polls have generally fallen short of international standards since communism ended in 1990.
