TIRANA, June 25 – Albania’s ruling leftist coalition has won 45 out of 61 mayoral races and the majority of seats in municipal councils across the country in last Sunday’s local elections, according to results made public by the Central Elections Commission
The main opposition Democratic Party and its allies won in 15 municipalities. An independent party won in an ethnic minority municipality, based on results with more than 95 percent of the votes counted.
The Socialist won eight of the country’s ten largest municipalities by population, including the large cities of Tirana, Durres, Vlora, Elbasan and Korça. Their rivals, the Democratic Party-led coalition have held on to their strongholds of Shkodra and Kamza, the latter a Tirana suburb which has grown in population in the past 25 years to become the country’s eighth largest municipality.
Erion Veliaj will take over as the new mayor of the capital Tirana after winning with a comfortable margin of about 53 percent of the vote. Vangjush Dako won reelection in Durres in a race that turned out to be less tight than expected. Shkodra’s Voltana Ademi will become the first female mayor of a large city in post-communist Albania. Several more female candidates have won in smaller municipalities.
While the Socialists swept to victory through most of the country, political observers noted the fall of some strongholds to opponents and the fall of north-south political division.
Përmet, the birthplace of Albanian communism, fell to the center-right Democrats for the first time ever. In fact, the Democrats made inroads in several other municipalities in southern Albania, where they usually do not have a strong electoral performance.
The Socialists, on the other hand, also took several municipalities in northern Albania that usually vote for the Democrats, including Has on the Kosovo border.
The elections were marked by a turnout of about 48 percent. However the percentage of resident voters is likely higher, as a third of the Albania’s population lives and works abroad, and the vast majority did not vote, unless they traveled to their hometowns to do so. Some estimates placed the turnout of the resident population at about 68 percent.
The voting process was calm, and despite some noted incidents and problems it did not rise to the tensions that often accompany Albanian elections, observers said, adding they would investigate several allegations of vote-buying and undue pressure on voters.
The U.S. and EU ambassadors in the country had called on the voters to reject candidates they suspected of having a criminal past. In two medium-sized municipalities in particular focus, Kavaja and Kruja, both Socialist candidates won despite the international objections. The candidates and their party had publicly said they had not been convicted of any crime, thus they had clean records.
These local administrative elections were more important than in the past because they are the first to be conducted after the administrative reform that drastically cut the number of municipalities in Albania from 384 to 61 by merging smaller rural municipalities with nearby larger urban ones.
The elections followed a month-long official campaign that ended with rallies held in the capital, Tirana.
Both Prime Minister Edi Rama of the Socialists and Parliament Speaker Ilir Meta of the Socialist Movement for Integration thanked the voters for their support and said that for them holding a good electoral process was more important than the results.
Rama said the victory was also a popular endorsement for the new administrative division of the country.
Lulzim Basha, leader of the opposition Democrats, said that despite the overall loss, the Democrats had increased their overall number of voters in the elections.
He accused the ruling Socialists of using the weight of the state and associated businessmen to pressure and buy the votes of many Albanians.
During the campaign, the Democrats insisted on the government’s failure to fight poverty, unemployment and asked for the reduction of the power prices and taxes.
The Socialists spoke of more local autonomy, more funding for specific infrastructure projects and a continuation of their rule of law agenda.
The campaign was held in a peaceful manner, without significant or serious incidents.
