A few days ago the Central Election Commission (KQZ) published the data of all the party candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections. In total, 15 political parties have registered a total of 2182 candidates in 12 electoral zones.
The website contains a wealth of information, including the CVs and decriminalization self-declaration forms of every single candidate. Based on a first analysis of the gender and age data presented on the website, a few conclusions can be drawn.
The Electoral Code prescribes that at least 30% of the candidates on each list needs to be female. Not only has Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party (PS) already been fined by the KQZ for not even meeting this quota in the County of Berat, they also score as the second worst party in terms of gender equality compared to the other parties, having only 36% of female candidates.
Only the Democratic Alliance (AD), which currently has no seats in Parliament, performs worse than the PS in terms of gender equality. Of the larger parties, the Party Democracy, Integration, Unity (PDIU) scores best, while the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) is somewhere in the middle of the distribution. The Bamir Topi’s New Democratic Spirit (FRD), the Communist Party of Albania (PKSh), and Popular Alliance for Justice (APD), all without any current seats in Parliament, score best with nearly 50% of their candidates women.
The distribution of age among the different parties is also telling for the current political climate. As is clear from fig. 2, all major parties have purged older candidates from their lists. The PS, LSI, and new parties FRD, Ben Blushi’s LIBRA, and Gjergj Bojaxhiu’s SFIDA have all no candidates older than 60 on their lists. On the contrary, the Communist Party has nearly 25% of its candidates over the age of 60.
When considering young deputy candidates, again the PS scores very bad. It has the lowest percentage of youth candidates of all parties, as is clear from fig. 3.
While the other main parties LSI and PDIU, as well as the new parties FRD, SFIDA, and LIBRA, all linger around 30-40% in terms of young candidates, the PS scores a very meager 9%. The youngest list is presented by SFIDA, with 80% of its candidates 40 or younger.
The PS thus shows very much the distribution of an establishment party of middle-aged men, which has mainly purged its older generation of Party of Labor cadres (except a few like Fatmir Xhafaj and Gramoz Ruçi) and refuses to let the younger generation in.
The parties with significantly younger candidate lists are mainly marginal parties with no current seat in Parliament, and no significant chance of obtaining one.
