Boycott is always wrong.

2026-07-14 09:35:00, Opinione Bujar Leskaj

Yesterday's boycott by the Democratic Party of the plenary session of the Parliament was a political and institutional mistake. We should have used the rostrum of the Parliament to confront the Rama sect in government with arguments, questions and criticism, but we chose absence, boycott.

What is the meaning, idea and message of this boycott? With this decision, we lost the opportunity to strongly denounce several cases:

First, the manipulated vote of the Diaspora on May 11, 2025. In today's session, we will discuss the 2025 Annual Report of the Central Election Commission and denounce the abuses and manipulations committed with the vote of over 240 thousand representatives from the Diaspora in the general elections of May 11, 2025. We will denounce the abuses and irregularities in the administration of postal deliveries. Cases of intentional delays in the distribution or return of voting envelopes, the reasons why some voters in the Diaspora did not receive their voting documentation on time.

We would denounce the abuses of voter identity verification and the defective chain of administration of the ballot. In postal voting systems, the transparency of the procedure is crucial to guarantee that the vote was cast by the authorized person and that it arrived intact, all the way to the electoral administration. Rama's patronage agents violated the integrity of the elections, by collecting or mediating with the voting envelopes and by interfering in the way they were administered. SPAK should investigate these interventions as a matter of priority, as they had an impact on the election result, constituting an electoral crime.

We would hold the CEC accountable for the complete lack of transparency regarding the registration of voters from abroad. The process included electronic registration and verification of documentation. Who rejected and who accepted applications, according to the patronage "registers"?

We would seek for the future improvement of the real-time tracking system for postal envelopes; standardization of identity verification procedures; increased information for voters abroad; independent audits of the process; as well as a full assessment by local and international observers on the functioning of Diaspora voting.

Secondly, we would denounce the poor performance and degradation of institutions such as AMF and INSTAT, institutions that were supposed to protect the Albanian citizen from the almost monopoly positions of non-banking financial markets in Albania (AMF) and were supposed to prepare accurate and reliable statistical indicators for public financial decision-making, citizens and researchers (INSTAT). Something they have not done even during 2025.

Thirdly, we would criticize and denounce the apathy and inaction of the High Inspector of Justice, an institution entirely dedicated to protecting corruption in the judiciary.

Fourth, we should have denounced the scandalous financial situation and deep corruption in the Albanian Radio Television, an institution that is maintained by Albanian taxpayers' money. As well as the apathy and enslavement by the Rama sect of the Audiovisual Media Authority (AMA), an institution that has no voice to speak out against Rama's attacks on independent media.

Fifth, and most importantly, we would support the great civic protest in the Assembly, which is on its 45th day today. As opposition members in the Assembly, we have the obligation to represent the demands and dissatisfactions of citizens in the protest. Their just demands for the repeal of the four hand-sewn laws of the Rama sect are also our demands. Our support for the demands of the protesters can and should serve to turn them into parliamentary initiatives and concrete proposals.

With the protest, we need to coordinate on its main demand, the resignation of the autocrat Rama. As well as for the New Electoral Code, since there are no longer two parties, majority-opposition, in this fundamental reform, but the citizen opinion of the protest is added. We must also coordinate on the implementation of the technical government, according to the definitions of the citizen protest.

It must be understood that any change to the Electoral Code and the Territorial Reform necessarily requires the seal and confirmation of the Citizens' Parliament, which is on the boulevard of protest, and new elections will be organized by a technical government, emerging from this protest.

Coordination, although not institutional, between the opposition's parliamentary action and civic engagement in protest, should and will increase political pressure for transparency, debate and accountability. The opposition has instruments at its disposal such as interpellations, investigative committees, amendments and parliamentary debate and today it should use them as intensively as possible, and not boycott plenary sessions of the Assembly.

Albanian political history has shown that parliamentary boycotts have rarely produced the results they intended. On the contrary, they have created gaps in citizen representation and weakened the constitutional role of the opposition itself.

Citizens do not vote for MPs to leave empty seats in the Parliament hall. They elect them to raise their concerns, to oppose laws they consider harmful, and to propose alternatives. Boycotting does not replace these obligations.

The time today is for the Citizens' Parliament of protest and the opposition. It is working backwards for the Rama sect, the government, the majority and the Assembly as Rama's ordinary notary. We must keep up with the times. And we cannot do this through boycotts.