Based on a project to monitor the Albanian media during the months leading up to the elections, LGBTI rights organizations Pro LGBT and Aleanca LGBT have published a list of four candidate deputies who have publicly held homophobic positions against LGBTI people.
During the monitoring of the media […] we identified several politicians who publicly have held homophobic position toward the LGBTI community. The publication of their declarations is done to remind politicians that they are not elected to spread hate and to discriminate but to represent with dignity their voters, a part of which are also LGBTI people.
In spite of previous promises, the Rama government has done nothing concrete to improve the lives of LGBT people in Albania, despite ongoing discrimination and abuse, especially outside the large cities.
The reinforcement of the human rights situation in Albania is one of the five key priorities for the opening of EU accession negotiations.
Pro LGBT and Aleanca LGBT identified the following four homophonic candidates:
Nard Ndoka (PD, No. 5 in Shkodra)
The former Minister of Health and leader of the Demo-Christian Party has publicly held the position that homosexuality is a “disease and deviance.” In a Facebook post that referred to the Tirana Gay (P)Ride, held peacefully on May 13, Ndoka stated:
This is tolerance: The government protests with bikes and balloons at 11:00 o’clock for the right of the “behind”!
Eduart Ndocaj (PBDKSh, No. 1 in Lezha)
Another candidate on the list is former PS deputy Eduart “The Cowboy” Ndocaj, who started his own party, the Albanian Demo-Christian Union Party (PBDKSh). During an interview for “Të paekspozuarit,” Ndocaj stated to be proud about his anti-LGBT views:
God could have created two men or two women, but he created man and woman where the family has the most importance.
The Christian Democratic parties have it as a prerequisite that they don’t agree with LGBT, they even have a name like a number plate!
Mesila Doda (PDIU, No. 2 in Tirana)
Mesila Doda has been one of the most vocal opponents of “gay marriage” in Parliament, even though such a legal initiative was never presented. She consistently tried to turn the debate on partnership legislation, which the Albanian government is obliged to implement under recent European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence, into the issue of “marriage.” In Opinion she stated:
I know which causes I have supported. […] I didn’t allow them to put LGBT into marriage.
Tritan Shehu (PD, No. 1 in Gjirokastra)
Finally, Tritan Shehu, director of the healthcare department in the Democratic Party, thinks that allowing partnership legislation to include LGBT people will “destroy the foundation of human society.”
Allowing “gay marriages” means destroying the foundation of human society, and the family! It means in reality to discriminate against society and its universal values, to seek to “touch” also children through adoption by such couples.
