"I Vote" Team Presents its Second Report

Members of Albanian Parliament have flagrantly violated 10 articles of the Parliamentary Book of Regulations and Procedures (articles 7, 25, 34, 45, 55, 57, 62, 65, 67 and 77). These violations include a wide array of infractions, ranging from physical altercations between the deputies, for which the Speaker of the Parliament failed to penalize the transgressors, to deputies present during Parliamentary meetings casting votes on behalf of their absent colleagues, both during plenary sessions and committee meetings.

The above-mentioned data only constitutes a part of the �I Vote� Team report, which was compiled from the information collected during the monitoring of the Albanian Parliament, spanning the period from September 2006 to January 2007. These findings were made public yesterday, during a press conference that summarized this project�s second round of findings.

According to this report, when comparing this Parliamentary session to the previous one, we note that the number of initiatives proposed by the Democratic Party's Parliamentary group has suffered a decrease. In fact, only 17% of the initiatives that have been passed during this session match the promises made by the Democratic Party during its electoral campaign.

On the other hand, the Republican Party's Parliamentary group- a member of the majority coalition � has managed to fulfill its electoral promises by 64%. In other words, 64% of the initiatives that this party has passed were in line with its electoral platform. In regards to the opposition, however, it has failed to propose any concrete initiatives throughout the duration of this Parliamentary session.

During the presentation of the report at the Tirana International Hotel, Elsi Rizvanolli, the project director, said that their objective "...was to provide accessible information regarding everything that occurs in the Albanian Parliament.�

The report includes information regarding how the deputies have voted compared with the promises that each of them had made to the Albanian electorate, violations of the Parliamentary Regulations, as well as information about the declaration of the deputies' assets.