In its communication of November 2 with the CEC, KRIIK has expressed its Position, especially on the political level of the issue, where, among other things, it emphasizes the need to address all violations documented and officially made available to the CEC since June 2022 (in the form of indications), in addition to their publication in the Final Report published in February 2022.
KRIIK commends the work done by the CEC administration in drafting the audit report of the funds received and spent by electoral subjects in the 2021 Assembly Elections, but judges that there are elements not included in it, unlike what was declared in the meeting of 20.10.2022, while also for the violations found and included in the report, KRIIK is of the opinion that there is a lack of addressing with a full proactive approach in view of the CEC responsibilities, role and powers, given to it by the legislator. (in case it is considered to be of interest, KRIIK can separately convey its considerations in support of this).
In continuity of its stance, KRIIK urges the CEC to address violations not only against political parties, as legal entities, but primarily against nominal individuals who exercise functions, duties and responsibilities, and who have violated campaign finance legal provisions. The political and institutional integrity of political parties is inextricably linked to the political and individual integrity of their functionaries, representatives or candidates.
Specifically, it is necessary for the CEC to highlight and therefore sanction the violations of the candidates as their direct responsibility and not as a violation committed by the relevant political party under the legal provision of a report not in accordance with the approved format, which in KRIIK’s judgment it is inappropriate.
Moreover, the entire legal framework and financial reporting rules clearly define the separate division of responsibilities between political parties and candidates. Even the latter clearly declare in their reporting forms the responsibilities they assume through the statements made. (Part C – Declaration, Standard format of the financial reporting of the election campaign for candidates on the multi-name lists of electoral subjects for the elections to the Assembly, Model approved by decision no. 13 dated 06.04.2021 of the Regulatory Commission).
Also, the responsibility should be recognized especially by the finance officers of political parties for whom there are roles, procedures and responsibilities well defined by the legal framework, even they have been continuously trained for this purpose by the CEC institution and other partners .
Their candidacy in the candidate lists of the respective party cannot be overlooked, as this is a clear and definite condition and requirement from the legal framework.
As for the identification of Electoral Offices that have operated for the parliamentary elections of 2021, the methodology and a complete and detailed information is presented in the Final Observation Report of KRIIK.
In short, we bring to your attention that in addition to field evidence through KRIIK observers, every report submitted to the CEC was examined, including all reports submitted by political party candidates, regardless of the difficulty in reading them.
We note here that in the case of mentioning the names of candidates, divided into different parties within the PD-AN coalition, this is done by referring to the party’s initials placed next to their names in the list of candidates published on the website of CEC .
Also, in the SMI self-declaration report, the same election office was declared several times, probably due to the declaration according to the months paid, so it was counted as the same election office. Also, this subject has declared as a donation in kind offices made available by 3 municipalities (Berat, Pogradec and Mallakastër) which could eventually be party offices for the corresponding branch in these municipalities. In KRIIK’s calculations referring to the self-declaration, these offices are considered as election offices, since they functioned as such.
Another control mechanism used for these offices was the monitoring of the implementation of Instruction no. 6, dated 23.03.2021 “On the use of propaganda and educational materials and the rules for their display during the election campaign” of the SEC, according to which the election subjects should notify the Mayors of the Municipalities as well as the CEC itself.
This resulted in an almost unfulfilled obligation, since only three entities (SP, DP and SMI), out of ten recorded as having opened election offices, announced the opening of these offices, but even these only in eight municipalities (Delvinë, Dropull, Elbasan , Krujë, Libohova, Mat, Peqin and Përrenjas) .
In total, from the examination of all the final monitoring reports submitted to the CEC by the CEC monitors, 660 election offices were opened by electoral subjects, while for 35 of them it was not specified which subject they belong to.
Meanwhile, after a comprehensive review of the findings, after your request of November 3, avoiding possible doubts and inaccuracies, it results that from the field monitoring by KRIIK observers, a total of 621 election offices have been opened. Meanwhile, according to the self-declaration reports of electoral subjects and candidates, there are a total of 390 electoral offices, marking an even greater difference, of 231 undeclared electoral offices.
In conclusion, KRIIK is of the opinion that the Report prepared by the CEC should fully contain all the observed violations, even including the cases where the CEC itself has been tolerant, and then of course it is at the discretion and competence of the institution of the CEC to proceed with the sanctioning or not of the subjects found in violation of the legal and regulatory framework in force.
As for the findings from the KRIIK monitoring that we are conveying to you, we emphasize that they have been reorganized in such a way that they can serve your purpose and to facilitate your work to inform the electoral subjects of the 25 April 2021. Therefore, they are found below (see relevant links) for each electoral subject participating in the Elections of April 25, 2021. The
complete database for electoral offices (including geographical location, party, candidate and link to the photo of the office, can be downloaded here in .csv
Here you can see a map of the distribution of electoral offices.
We bring to your attention, but also of the electoral subjects, that the findings are the product of a voluminous work of examining the self-declaration reports which, as you know, are those published on the website and are difficult to read, given that no the electoral subject did not submit this report in the editable “Excel” format as required by the reporting formats. This means that the possibility of human errors is not excluded, especially with regard to the recorded and calculated figures, while the purpose of the extracted and sent data remains that of an indication for a more in-depth and complete verification by the CEC institution.