In the 11th attempt to constitute the Assembly, it is expected that the third vote will be held for the election commission for secret ballot. Opposition MPs have requested clarification from the Assembly administration. The administration has been asked to prepare for the failed vote, and it itself has requested that the proposed name for the Speaker of Parliament be initially ascertained in the session.
PThe 11th attempt to constitute the Assembly, which began on April 15, will take place on Monday.
This time too, the winning party is expected to continue its efforts to introduce secret balloting – initially by forming an election commission for the secret ballot for the Speaker of the Assembly.
PDK MP Ganimete Musliu said that the state has been left without institutions because, as she said, “Albulena has decided to become Albin’s puppet.”
“Albulena is allowing her name to become the weapon with which Albini is aiming to kill our democracy. She is becoming the cause of an institutional, political and moral crisis. But they will not succeed. Not even a thousand Albinas and Albulenas will be able to kill this state”. They will remain only as two spots on the institutional path of the Republic of Kosovo. They tried ten times, they failed ten times. In the meantime, Donika, Mimoza and Peci are trying to sell the whole of Kosovo to them, but to sell them to them, they must first have them to remember”, said Musliu.
And according to the Assembly Administration, regarding the proposal for a secret ballot, it can be decided if 50 percent plus one MP votes in favor – for example, when 31 votes are in favor and 61 MPs participate in the vote.
On May 10, MP Hykmete Bajrami of the LDK and Abelard Tahiri of the PDK stayed with the head of the Assembly administration, Arben Loshi, for about 1 minutes.
According to MP Bajrami, the reason was because they had heard that an attempt would be made to introduce secret voting.
“We asked the Secretary of the Assembly whether the information circulating that there is an attempt to change the voting form is true, and he confirmed it and said that they received a request from Mr. Dehari for the Secretariat to prepare for a secret ballot,” she said.
Arben Loshi, deputy secretary general of the Assembly, said that he received the request to prepare for a closed vote at the time when the May 1 session was scheduled to begin.
But he said he requested that the name that would be placed on the ballot be officially determined in the session first.
He also said that the interpretation of the regulation is up to the chairperson, who, as he points out, changed the plan for open voting.
“Since the first scenario that began on April 15, everything has been in accordance with the Constitution, in accordance with the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo and in accordance with the practice of the past eight legislatures. Changes that may occur on the spot are other issues that with the rules of the Assembly, the chairperson of the session interprets the rules – the president or the chairperson. We as an administration are a professional body and are not politicians and we serve with objectivity all political entities that have won mandates in the Assembly,” said Loshi.
The opposition parties have so far called the attempt to move to a secret ballot an act in violation of the Assembly’s regulations and in violation of the Constitution.
They have emphasized that the LVV has gone outside the session script prepared by the Assembly secretariat. Meanwhile, the Vetëvendosje Movement has been summoned to the Constitutional Court’s 2014 judgment.
“Item 128. At the constitution of the Assembly, all deputies must be present and vote as they wish, openly or secretly, to vote ‘for’, ‘against’ or ‘abstain’, and cannot be excused from doing so,” the resolution states.
And the head of the Assembly secretariat says that the scenario with which they started the session is in line with what has been implemented in previous legislatures.
Asked whether the administration takes responsibility if any violations occur, he said that legal responsibility falls on the chairman, while the administration takes full responsibility for the advice it gives.
“In the scenario of May 1, there was a continuation – open voting. The candidate did not pass the preliminary session and we are left there… The Chairman has assessed that a secret ballot is possible, which is why he informed the deputies at the beginning of the continuation of the constitutive session. We have asked the Chairman that since you are entering a secret ballot, a temporary electoral commission should be established and that we need 15 minutes to make preparations for a secret ballot, and in this case the commission should be composed of all members of all political entities, because we do not have parliamentary groups… The administration has not suggested either open or closed voting,” said Loshi.
As Loshi said, the vote regarding the formation of the electoral commission will be repeated, as it is already considered a halfway point, since there was no majority of deputies who expressed their will by voting for or against the proposal.
And if the majority of deputies vote, then the proposal can be responded to, either by moving it forward or by rejecting it.
The constitutive session began on April 15th and the proposal to elect Albulena Haxhiu as Speaker of the Assembly did not pass after six votes.