TIRANA, Jan. 19 – With six Albanian municipalities missing mayors, by-elections must take place in less than two months, according to the country’s head of state.
President Ilir Meta announced that the by-elections to fill the empty mayoral seats will take place in on the first Sunday of March, with election officials agreeing to the date.
Meta announced last week that he had started the process of the by-election scheduling by sending a request for information to the Central Election Commissioner.
In a meeting with Taulant Balla, who leads the ruling Socialist Party’s parliamentary group, March 6 was agreed as acceptable by the ruling party.
The municipalities that need to have by-elections include large populated centers of Durres, Shkoder and Lushnje, as well as smaller ones of Diber, Rrogozhine and Vore.
The by-elections, in which the deeply divided opposition says it will take part, are also likely to serve as a testing ground for the two factions of the Democratic Party – which are likely to run separate candidates – to see which one has more electoral support.
Some opposition voices, like Dashamir Shehi of the National Development Movement, called on the opposition to come up with unified candidates to avoid SP taking all the seats.
“If we go in divided, it’s a handover, like the boycott, it is not an election,” Shehi said.
The elections should have already taken place, but President Meta had refused to schedule them until the Constitutional Court ruled on the validity of the previous administrative elections in general. The court ruled the elections valid, even though they were boycotted by the opposition, resulting in the lowest voter turnout ever and 60 of 61 mayoral seats being taken by the ruling Socialists.
Since then, a combination of factors, including resignations, decriminalization law filters and the death of a sitting mayor have left some seats empty.
Mayors elected in March will only serve for a year, as normal local elections are scheduled to take place in June 2023.
