site.btaElection Day Ends in Albania

Albania’s parliamentary elections are over, local media reported on Sunday evening. Polling stations, which opened at 7 a.m. local time (8 a.m. EET), closed at 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. EET), except those where voters were still queuing to cast their ballots.

A total of 3,713,761 Albanian citizens were eligible to vote in Sunday’s elections, according to data from the information portal Shqiptarja. Albanians abroad who registered to vote through the online platform numbered 245,935. These were the first elections in Albania to include voting from abroad. Albanian citizens in the diaspora cast their votes by mail, with ballots beginning to arrive in Albania from April 17, Euronews Albania reported.

Sunday’s elections were the eleventh parliamentary vote in the country since the fall of the communist regime in 1991, broadcaster Top Channel recalled.

The ballot for the parliamentary vote featured 11 parties and coalitions, with 2,046 candidates running for the 140-seat Albanian Parliament, spread across the country’s 12 districts.

Under a new electoral formula, each party participated with 186 parliamentary candidates – organized into closed lists (ranked by the party) of 46 people and open lists (with preference voting) of 140 people.

The ruling Socialist Party of Albania, led by Prime Minister Edi Rama, is seeking a fourth consecutive term. Rama presented a 12-point programme for his fourth term, which includes salary increases, employment and social protection, education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure, energy, and more.

The leader of the coalition around the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Albania, former president and prime minister Sali Berisha, declared that he would bring down what he called "Edi Rama’s dictatorship" and levelled accusations against the government. The Democrats have been in opposition since 2013, when the Socialist Party came to power.

According to Shqiptarja, 55 polling stations in the southwestern district of Vlore were blocked until 6 p.m. local time due to the passing of the Giro d’Italia cycling race.

In Tirana, tensions rose shortly before the close of election day, as representatives of the Democratic Party of Albania called on police to intervene over the alleged prolonged presence of Socialist Party candidates at a polling station, an act prohibited under election rules.