The Central Elections Commission (CEC) believes that it has not enough time to scan the past of all candidates who will run in the upcoming June 18 general elections under the decriminalization law.

Addressing a meeting on the upcoming electoral process, hosted by the Civil Society Forum, the head of the Central Elections Commission, CEC, Denar Biba highlighted difficulties in meeting this legal obligation on time. Biba said that next parliament would hardly be constituted in time, because CEC won’t be able to verify all 7,000 candidates for MPs within the imposed deadline.

“We will be facing a major objective problem in terms of deadline to sift through some 7,000 candidates,” CEC chairman stated.

He also voiced skepticism over the proposal of the Socialist Movement for Integration to introduce an open-lists system in the next parliamentary elections. “In the cases of ‘torn lists’ we would still have presence of not very positive persons. People with money and regional power would clash even within the lists,” said Biba.

Representatives of political parties at the meeting backed a proposal suggesting for the publication of the candidates lists three months ahead of the general elections in order to allow CEC more time available for the verification process.

The Vice Chairman of the Socialist Party Parliamentary group, Taulant Balla declared that the open list system would make the vote counting process too difficult.

However, the Socialist Movement for Integration considers the open list system as the optimal choice, with the SMI whip, Petrit Vasili, saying that open lists give citizens the opportunity to choose among the candidates determined by the Parties. “I did not understand the chairman of CEC. ‘Torn lists’ is a concept that doesn’t exist, it is a metaphor used in all cases when you don’t want to answer for a certain thing,” stated Vasili.