Lack of reform could pave the way for election manipulations

Political analyst Imer Mushkolaj has told the newspaper “The new age” that deliberately reform has been blocked by political subjects now and years. He has said the lack of this reform could pave the way for manipulations in the election process. “If political parties were interested then the reform would have been carried out, but it is apparently lacking political will, and because of that, citizens are suffering the lack of electoral reform because their vote in many cases is not going to the right place, in the sense it cannot be sure it will be assessed properly.

Election reform has been blocked by political parties, and this translates into that they are interested in continuing with the same logic that can pave the way for various manipulations in the elections, but also the procrastination of creating government coalitions”, Mushkolaj has stated.

Despite the establishment of pre-election coalitions, he has said the lack of reform could also produce the political crisis after the elections. This time things will be a little clearer in the sense that, however, four political groups are being portrayed somewhere. The logic is that two groups create the coalition and two remain in opposition. However, this is not at all avaricial that there will still be no problems after the elections, especially if international pressure goes into play for involvement or not of any specific party in the coalition for the major interest of Kosovo, which usually happens”, has been expressed, adding that there had to be no procrastination like the past times because the Constitutional Court has already suggested the way of creating institutions. “On the other hand, early coalitions in some form are giving me the impression that there may be more clarity by drawing four main political groups that then even the race that makes it more clear, and that means that even the final outcome will be more clear”, he stressed.

Artan Murati from the Kosovo Democratic Institute(KDI) has also told the newspaper “The new age” has no political will to complete election reforms. There has been a tendency since 2011 to start an election reform, there is still nothing concrete since there is no political subject's will in the way of this reform. Especially the issue of election zones and other issues has not yet been addressed and addressed by political subjects. On the other hand, in order to facilitate the way coalitions are made and the division of positions later, electoral reform should not necessarily be reformed. A good starting point would also be the Law on Government, which would specify the size of the government and thus the political subjects would know from the beginning how many positions they could share”, stated that even with the Law to fund political subjects, some issues would be regulated that would primarily be made with the transparency of political finances, the way of spending, the political campaign and then with a direct reform for electoral areas, the removal of voter lists and so on.

He has said going to the elections without electoral reform no doubt has its shortcomings. The “Manipulations in selection are also associated with these laws that I mentioned, especially the Law to fund political subjects. Going to elections without electoral reform no doubt has its shortcomings, which would be greatly reduced if reform was completed”, Murati stressed. According to him, the political crisis is taking place mainly because of some Constitutional Court judgments. “They are constitutional standards and are actually the most problematic and treatable. These are issues that cannot be solved only with certain laws, but there must be literal revisions of constitutional provisions, of the work of the Parliament in order to ensure that there will be no crisis, nor will there be large political calculations that would harm the creation of new institutions and prolong this process even more”, Murati said.