On Friday, Albania’s main political parties and their respective coalitions wrapped up a month-long campaign for the mayoral by-elections that will take place on Sunday, March 6.
The leaders of the country’s three major political forces were in Shkodra yesterday for a final meeting with their supporters: Prime Minister Edi Rama with the Socialist Party (PS), Lulzim Basha with the formal Democratic Party (PD), and Sali Berisha with the ‘House of Freedom’ coalition.
Six municipalities will be electing new mayors tomorrow: Vorë, Dibër, Lushnjë, Rrogozhinë and the central hubs of Shkoder and Durrës.
All mayors elected in March will serve for only one year, as the next local elections are scheduled for summer 2023.
In fact, these elections are widely seen as a battle for legitimacy within the PD between Berisha and Basha. The two parted ways last year after Basha excluded Berisha from party forums following his designation by the United States for corruption.
Berisha does not recognize Basha’s leadership of the Democratic Party. Along with his supporters, he has established its own political movement, the Refoundation Group, that will be electing new party leadership later this March. Following a General Assembly of the PD initiated by Berisha, a country-wide referendum of PD members voted to remove Basha as leader.
However, the Central Election Commission recognized Basha’s PD as the official party and Berisha entered a coalition with the Socialist Movement for Integration under the ‘House of Freedom’ banner to participate in the elections.
Shkodra will be a key in this legitimacy battle between Basha and Berisha. The city has long been a bastion of the Democratic Party and in the past 30 years, it has almost always voted with the PD and elected PD mayors.
An Euronews Albania poll published on February 24, showed that 36,3 percent of the Shkoder electorate would vote for Bardh Spahia as mayor of Shkoder, the House of Freedom’s candidate.
Furthermore, more Shkoder voters would support PD in elections if the party were led by Berisha instead of Basha: 35 percent vs. 13 percent. Among PD voters in the last elections, over 75 percent said they wouldn’t vote for the party under Basha’s leadership; nearly 70 percent of them said they would vote for it with Berisha leading the PD.
While poll results in Shkoder do not necessarily reflect the support for the two PD leaders in other constituencies in Albania, they do spell trouble for Basha’s already shaky hold on the PD.
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