TIRANA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The Albanian parliament is set to fail to elect the new president of the country for the third consecutive round as no candidacy was presented in the parliament here on Sunday by 4 p.m. local time, the deadline before the session in the parliament on Monday.
Lawmakers are scheduled to gather on Monday at a formal plenary session which will start at 10 a.m. to discuss the possible candidates, but none of the parliamentary groups in the parliament has submitted so far any proposal for the name of the new president.
The first two rounds for the election of the president, scheduled for May 16 and May 23, both failed as no candidate was proposed.
Since the start of the process, the ruling Socialist Party (SP) has declared that the opposition parties will be given the right to propose candidates for president in the first three rounds.
Taulant Balla, head of the SP parliamentary group, earlier said that the opposition is not taking any responsibility to formally propose candidacies.
Meanwhile, according to Enkelejd Alibeaj, the appointed leader of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), the election process "should be conducted by consensus."
According to the country's constitution, a proposed candidate must receive a total 84 votes in the first three rounds in order to be elected as president, but the ruling majority has only 74 seats in the 140-seat parliament.
In the fourth and fifth rounds, a simple majority of 71 votes in the parliament will be sufficient for the election of the new president.
A total of signatures from 20 lawmakers are needed for the nomination of an official candidate.
The mandate of the current President Ilir Meta ends in July this year. ■
