Now that all deadlines have passed and the opposition has insisted on its boycott of the parliamentary elections, it has become clear that a total of 15 parties will participate. All of them have registered as individual electoral subjects, meaning that there will be no pre-electoral coalitions. As we have explained before, this will severely disadvantage the smaller parties.
In the first phase of the registration process, 45 parties registered as electoral subjects at the Central Election Commission (KQZ) on April 10. In the second phase, whose deadline was April 19, parties that had no representation in Parliament had to present 5,000 signatures at the KQZ, or be part of a pre-electoral coalition.
After passing the second phase, the parties had to hand in candidate lists for all electoral regions of the country on April 29. As no pre-electoral coalition were registered, the number of participating parties dropped from 45 to 15.
A few days ago, the Central Election Commission (KQZ) approved the official voting ballot and the order in which the parties will appear on them. All parties will be represented by an acronym, the full name of the party, and its leader. the elections will be held with “closed lists,” which means that voters can only vote for a party, and not a specific candidate.
The voting ballot will feature the following parties:
- FRD – New Democratic Spirit, headed by Bamir Topi
- PDS – Social Democracy Party, headed by Paskal Milo
- PAD – Democratic Alliance Party, headed by Neritan Ceka
- APD – Popular Alliance for Justice, headed by Bilal Kola
- PDIU – Justice, Integration, and Unity Party, headed by Shpëtim Idrizi
- SFIDA – Challenge for Albania, headed by Gjergj Bojaxhi
- PADSh – Demo-Christian Alliance of Albania Party, headed by Zef Bushati
- AAK – National Arbnoric Alliance, headed by Gjet Ndoj
- MEGA – Ethnic Greek Minority for the Future, headed by Kristo Kiço
- PKD – Christian Democratic Party, headed by Dhimitër Muslia
- LIBRA – Equal List Party, headed by Ben Blushi
- PSD – Social-Democratic Party, headed by Skënder Gjinushi
- PKSh – Communist Party of Albania, headed by Hysni Milloshi
- LSI – Socialist Movement for Integration, founded by Ilir Meta, headed by Petrit Vasili
- PS – Socialist Party of Albania, headed by Edi Rama
Some statistics
In 2013 66 parties and two independent candidates took part in the parliamentary elections, while in the elections this year 15 parties will take part, or more than 75% less.
Only four of the 15 parties on the ballot (PS, LSI, PDIU, KKD) have a mandate in the current Parliament.
Three of the 15 parties (SFIDA, LIBRA, APD) will participate for the first time, and were all formed during the last year.
Eight of the 12 parties that also took part in the 2013 elections (PDS, PAD, PADSH, AAK, MEGA, PKD, PSD, PKSH) received less than 1% of the votes on a national level.
Two of the parties, PDIU and FRD receive 1–3% of the votes, while the two other, LSI and PS took 10–41%.
Three of the 12 parties that participated in the 2013 elections were part of the PD coalition, 8 were in a coalition with PS and LSI, whereas the FRD ran as a single party platform.
Ten of the 15 parties have never had a deputy in Parliamant, whereas the two founding members of LIBRA, Hafizi and Blushi, split off from the PS.
In total, the 15 parties have presented 2180 candidates, of which 909 (41.7%) are women.
The boycott of the opposition and the failure to register and pre-electora coalitions have shown that more than half of the political parties in the country are basically without any electorate whatsoever, parties that only show up during the elections, safely embedded within a coalition with one of the two big parties. Their only role is to buffer the leader of the coalition, and make sure as much votes as possible stay inside coalition, and eventually go to the coalition leader.
