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A (public) letter to the head of SPAK! On the plan of measures to fight electoral crime

2025-01-29 17:37:00, Opinione Mentor Kikia

Opinion from Mentor Kikia!

Honorable Mr. Prosecutor!
First of all, I want to say that my voice and modest public contribution has been constantly in support of the work of SPAK, in an effort to do (at least a little) justice in this country. And it will continue to be so.

SPAK has published a plan of measures on the “Implementation of the Strategy for the Investigation and Prevention of Electoral Crime during the 2025 Parliamentary Elections.” I decided to address my position on this topic to you personally, thinking that I can modestly help in this important issue!

May 11th Elections/ SPAK reveals plan of measures to prevent electoral crime
January 29, 10:10

The investigation of electoral crime is absolutely very important. Because from the deviation of the vote, the deformation of democracy and the theft of power, every other type of theft stems. I want to address only one of the most massive, most serious and most influential forms of the multitude of violations that are classified as criminal offenses of electoral crime.

-Financing of parties and electoral campaigns!

It may have been a lack of attention that this “element” does not appear in the Plan of Measures. In the “chapter” - Financial Monitoring - you only foresee the monitoring of budget expenditures for investments with electoral effect.

During the US elections, we here in Albania knew exactly how much money Donald Trump and the Biden/Harris duo had raised from donors. We even knew who the most important donors were. But we have never known and do not know who and how much funds the campaigns of the parties in Albania, from the largest to the smallest.

Albanian parties open bank accounts in every bank to collect donations, but they do not publish the amounts or the donors. They only say that we have membership fees!!!!!!

They spend significantly more money than the state gives them, but this funding is informal. The campaign for the immigrant vote has opened up another chapter of costs: Office rentals, meeting rooms, plane and car trips, hotels, and people hired to contact and register voters...

Who pays these costs?

We regularly see local and central officials at activities abroad: Do they travel with the institutions' money? If so, this is a violation. If not, who pays their costs? We also see activities of other parties and again the same question:
Who pays?

Honorable Mr. Prosecutor!
Vote buying is the most flagrant form of electoral crime. But you should know that it is the crime with the least impact on the outcome of the elections. Politics today, before buying votes, buys people's minds.

Field campaigns, rented offices, hired people, advertising products for social networks, photographers and cameramen, stages and concerts, singers and television directors, buses transporting rallies, carpets and chairs, flags, T-shirts, hats and banners, and expensive television ads that seduce and intoxicate the already dazed voter. All of this costs a lot of money.

Again the question is: Who pays?
We know! Campaign costs are paid by businesses. By bank, but they are not declared. Cash, but again they are not declared. In kind, like fuel, bus, or other service coverage, and again they are not declared.

Those who finance the ruling party today will get their money back many times over, through tenders and concessions. Those who support the opposition expect the same. There are even those who finance both parties, just to be on the safe side.

He who finances politics informally, promotes corruption. This is how the economic-political oligarchy was created. That is why the largest tenders and concessions are shared by no more than 10 companies on the table.

We know! The costs are also paid by people connected to crime. That's why in this country politics, business and crime became a syndicate. Because politics needs money and they provide it.

I have participated in about 40 roundtables with foreign ambassadors and experts, for about 20 years in a row, where they regularly demanded: “Financial transparency for political parties.” But the thing that the parties in Albania have agreed to, without any negotiation, is not to reveal who supplies their fuel.

I worked on a project to monitor the real expenses of the parties, in the 2013 election campaign. It was discovered that the declaration they made to the CEC was only 20% of what the monitoring had calculated. And the project's accounts were far from the real expenses. The prosecution of the time refused to take this denunciation document as an argument. Even the CEC refused to read it.

So, Honorable Prosecutor!
If you really want to investigate electoral crime, start with campaign money. Ask the parties, all of them without exception, to tell you today who covers the expenses of their trips around the world.

Ask to verify the bank accounts they have opened or will open.
Do a cursory review of real expenses, it's very simple, and you will understand that what the parties declare to the CEC are just crumbs.

Neither electoral crime nor corruption will ever be fought unless the tap of corruption and criminal money that supplies the electoral and political machinery is turned off.
I hope I have helped modestly by bringing attention to a major problem. /CNA