FLASH
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Voters in the Kukes Region are expected to elect three members of parliament on May 11, with the likely outcome being two mandates for the Democratic Party and its Greater Albania coalition and one mandate for the Socialist Party. This was in fact a historic result.
Only this time, Tom Doshi's Social Democratic Party has announced an unusual goal, to "take a mandate from Berisha" in this region, while the results of the 2023 local government elections, in which the PSD won 5 councilors and over 2,000 votes, suggest that the claim remains a distant objective. One of the former DP deputies has meanwhile joined the "party" of politicians who change sides.
The Socialist Party has also announced this time the objective of overturning the district result to 2 to 1 for the SP.
In the 2009 and 2013 elections, when four MPs were elected in Kukës, the result was fixed at 1 for the Socialist Party and its allies and 3 for the opposition. This did not change in the 2013 elections, when the Socialist Movement for Integration ran in coalition with the Socialist Party.
Since the 2017 elections, three MPs have been elected in Kukës, and in both cases, one for the SP and 2 for the DP, making the race even more difficult to change.
In 2013, the election result was 60% to 40% in favor of the DP, while in the 2017 elections, the result narrowed to 47 to 44%, with 7% of the vote going to the LSI. In the 2021 elections, the LSI appeared to withdraw from the district, mobilizing only 64 votes, thus allowing the Democratic Party to defeat the Socialists by a score of 62 to 36, one of the deepest results in a decade.
The results of local elections are not closely comparable to the results of parliamentary elections, but the 2023 local elections in Kukës provide signals about what may happen in the May 11 elections in terms of electoral machinery.
The Socialist Party won the races in the municipalities of Kukës and Tropoja, while the Bashke Fitojmë coalition, which at the time represented the majority of the Democratic Party but unofficially due to the judicial conflict over the seal, won the municipality of Has. The Socialists regained Kukës in early elections in September 2023 after the previous mayor Safet Gjici lost his mandate following a sex scandal in office, and was later convicted of corruption.
In the local government elections, all three municipalities taken together, SP candidates won 20 thousand votes while Bashke Fitojmë candidates received 19 thousand votes. About 2 thousand more votes went to a local politician named Abedin Oruçi, who ran in the Municipality of Kukës. But it is the results of the elections for the municipal councils of Kukës and Tropoja and the unusually high number of competing parties that won mandates that suggests that multiple electoral machines have operated in those elections. For the Municipality of Kukës, 29 parties competed for the 31 municipal council seats, of which 18 parties won at least one mandate.
The large presence of small competing parties in such council elections suggests the existence of local politicians who, while mobilizing votes for one of the major party mayoral candidates, collect council votes for small parties that have no real presence in such municipalities but are used by local politicians simply for the purpose of counting votes.
The large presence of small competing parties in such council elections suggests the existence of local politicians who, while mobilizing votes for one of the major party mayoral candidates, collect council votes for small parties that have no real presence in such municipalities but are used by local politicians simply for the purpose of counting votes.
Demographic and social profile
The Kukës region is located in a hilly and mountainous area in the north-eastern part of Albania. According to the 2023 census, the region has a population of 62 thousand inhabitants and a population density of 26 inhabitants per square kilometer.
The population in this region has declined drastically, from 111 thousand in 2001, to 85 thousand in 2011 and 62 thousand in 2023. Both the rural and urban populations have shrunk between the two censuses, but the rural population has shrunk more. In 2023, approximately 40% of the region's population lived in the three cities of Kukës, Krumë and Bajram Curri, while 60% lived in rural areas.
Detailed census data by age group suggests that in 2023, the region had about 46,000 adults, i.e. citizens with the right to vote. Compared to the 41,000 who voted in that year's local government elections, which took place just a few months before the census, the actual turnout is approximately 89%. About 3,900 voters from the diaspora have registered to cast their votes remotely in this region in the May 11 elections.
Candidates
The Socialist Party is running on the closed list of Kukës MP Eduart Shalsi, born in Korça and residing in Tirana, engaged in politics since 2004 as deputy mayor of Tirana Municipality during the time when it was led by Edi Rama, and then, as an MP since 2009. He has competed in Tirana then in Berat and then in Korça, and is now expected to represent the residents of Kukës.
The Socialist Party seems to have pinned its hopes on overturning the result in Kukës thanks to Alban Zeneli, who was previously a member of parliament for the Democratic Party. Zeneli also declares his residential address in Tirana. The other two candidates are Ali Hallaçi, an advisor to the Foreign Minister and former diplomat in Cairo, and Aristogena Poga, a director of the health service in Has.
Among the opposition, businessman Flamur Hoxha, a current MP, is running on the safe list for the Greater Albania coalition. His usual residence is in Tirana. Isuf Çelaj, a current MP and former director, is seeking a new mandate from the open lists, alongside Elvira Peka, a resident of Has, an economist in a private company, and Shkelqim Shehu, a resident of Kukës who worked in the Kukës Municipality until 2019. / BIRN
You can find the biographies of the other competing candidates HERE.
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