The head of the Central Election Commission, Ilirjan Celibashi, in an appearance for the media, has published the official figures of participation in the local elections of May 14.
According to Celibashi, 1,395,360 voters participated in the election from the 3,650,658 names on the list, which means that the official participation in the election was 38.22%.
Asked about Prime Minister Edi Rama's statement, which he described as a scandalous failure of the CEC, Chief Commissioner Ilirjan Celibashi initially chose not to answer.
"I have no comment on this statement of the prime minister", said Celibashi.
Then, when asked again, Celibashi emphasized that only 5% of the voting centers were opened after 08:00. According to him, this delay did not have a big impact on the process.
"90% of the voting centers were opened between 07:00 and 7:30, only 5% after 8 and for the other 5% it started between 08:00 and 09:30, so there are only 5% of centers where the process started after 8 o'clock, these are facts and then based on these facts, you can make your own assessment, but the impact of this delay has been negative on the progress of the process, I know that voters went and were not able to I vote, that's why we give all our apologies, because it should have been opened at 07:00", said Celibashi.
Regarding the video that circulated in the media, where the electronic identification devices were thrown away as "waste", Celibashi stated that he felt very sorry and angry when he saw them.
"I felt very sorry and angry when I saw those images, I saw them without appearing on social networks, they are workers who have been recruited for certain services, loading and unloading, it is not an excuse, it would be too much to say that the CEC will have its own evaluations, that gesture will obscure and eclipse all the honest effort that the CEC as an institution has made to prepare these elections, where a gesture cannot obscure it or even question it", said Celiabashi .