Different from four years ago, Prime Minister Edi Rama will not ask the ministers in his new cabinet to leave their mandates as deputies. This means that 13 out of 15 ministers in Prime Minister Rama’s cabinet, including he himself, will keep their voting rights in Parliament.
As the PS currently has a majority of 74 seats, 71 being the necessary number of votes to pass regular legislation, Rama’s cabinet will have a tight grip on the Parliament and the parliamentary group of the PS. The overall effect will thus be weakening of the critical oversight role of Parliament and the constitutional check that it is supposed to be on the power of the executive.
Together with the Prime Minister’s plan of “co-governance with the people,” the details of which remain murky, this decision, which creates a situation uncommon in Western European countries, forms yet another step in his consolidation of power.
In a speech that exuded the rhetoric turns and phraseology of the communist era, Prime Minister Rama announced the “co-governance platform” again recently on Sunday, at the opening of his speech to the National Assembly of the Socialist Party:
We will govern Albania for the coming 4 years, alone at the steering wheel, but as fellow-travelers for a coalition that has never been tried before: the Socialist Party with the common people of this country. […] So, we are at the beginning of a new political project inspired from below, with the result of June 25 and our reflection from above […].
