TIRANA – The Ad hoc Committee is scheduled to hold hearing sessions on Monday and Tuesday with the 193 candidates for members of the Vetting institutions. Although the political deal between the ruling Socialist Party and the Democratic Party of May 18 paved the way to the opposition for entering upcoming general elections and vote the Vetting, the process has been marred by disagreements between the two sides.
On Thursday’s meeting of the Ad hoc Committee, the ruling majority and the opposition voiced different opinions on the way of proceeding with examination of candidacies. The opposition claims that it should have detailed information by the Ombudsman and the International Monitoring Operation (IMO) carrying reasons of positive or negative evaluation by these institutions about every candidate.
While, the majority has expressed its determination for going ahead with the process. Therefore, on May 29 and 30 will take place two hearing sessions with 193 candidates, those with a positive evaluation included, as well as those put on the blacklist by the IMO.
The socialist chairman of the Ad hoc Committee Ulsi Manja has told the media that the process is rather transparent and all the members of the committee have the files and the available documents for the 193 applicants.
According to Manja, the opposition request is meaningless because the Ombudsman has already presented all the documents handed over by the applicants themselves while the IMO is not an institution that produces documents, but has only a recommendation role in the process.
He also said that the law stipulates that the committee can transfer the candidates from the blacklist to the “Whitelist” if finds a common language and appreciates IMO recommendations not convincing.
“We shall proceed with hearing sessions with all the applicants on Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday afternoon we shall select the names that will be forwarded for the vote to the two other Ad hoc committees”, Manja emphasized.
The end of May is the deadline for the 6-member Ad hoc Committee to approve the candidates that will be forwarded to the other two committees. A few days ago, PM Rama warned that if the opposition blocks the Vetting process again, then the ruling majority will break the May 18 agreement.