Tirana’s main square is seeing the addition of a new high-rise among the many multi-story buildings that have sprung up in Albania’s capital in recent years. The building, shaped like a human head, stands at the edge of the square where Dibra Street begins. Albanian and international media reported that architect Winy Maas, co-founder of the Dutch firm MVRDV, was inspired by a conversation with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who told him: “I want to do something with history.”

This led to the idea that the building would resemble Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, the 15th-century military leader who resisted the Ottoman Empire. However, as the building slowly takes shape, it does not resemble Skanderbeg. Media critical of the Socialist Party (SP) government have criticized the building’s appearance, claiming it actually looks more like PS leader and Prime Minister Rama.

In Albanian public opinion, the building’s resemblance to Rama’s features was discussed in the context of the dominance that Rama and the SP have established in Albanian institutions and society. According to some media, Rama has consistently projected himself as a politician aiming to leave a significant mark on Albania’s modern history. At times, he has alluded to this ambition, such as when he shared an AI-generated video depicting himself alongside Ismail Qemali, the prime minister who declared Albania’s independence in 1912 and is considered a foundational figure in the country’s state-building.

Rama’s rise in politics began in 1998 when he was appointed Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports in the SP government led by then-Prime Minister Pandeli Majko. Two years later, Rama was elected mayor of Tirana, a position he held for 11 years. During this time, he also took leadership of the SP, and in 2009, he ran for prime minister for the first time in national elections, where the SP lost to the Democratic Party (DP).

In September 2013, Rama became Albania’s prime minister, following a victory in the national elections held in June of that year. He subsequently won two more national elections in 2017 and 2021, remaining prime minister for three consecutive terms, marking the longest tenure of any prime minister in Albania’s democratic history.

During this period, Rama has built a dominant party. Except for his first term after the 2013 election victory —when he needed a coalition with former Albanian President Ilir Meta and his Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) — the SP governed alone in the following two terms, securing enough parliamentary seats in the 2017 and 2021 elections.

Over these years in power, Rama portrayed his party as a transformative force in the economy, tourism and Albania’s international image, while projecting EU membership as the ultimate political goal of his governance.

Although he leads a party that nominally represents the left ideology in Albania, Rama’s policies, particularly economic ones, are associated with neoliberalism.

“The SP under Rama has detached itself from its leftist or social-democratic identity, transforming into a pragmatic, transactional party with a neoliberal image but largely stripped of ideology,” says Gresa Hasa, an independent publicist and expert on Albanian politics affiliated with the University of Graz in Austria. “Since 2005, Rama has strengthened ties with economic power, particularly the local oligarchy, creating a symbiosis between political and economic power. This has led to favoritism toward certain business groups, fostering a clientelist system.”

During the SP’s governance, Rama’s government has taken aggressive steps toward privatizing public assets, deregulating the market for foreign investments and attacking trade unions, practices ideologically aligned with the right. The party he leads has been repeatedly accused of building a system that favors practices associated with unchecked neoliberal capitalism, with consequences that marginalize the middle and lower classes.

During the SP’s governance, Rama’s government has taken aggressive steps toward privatizing public assets, deregulating the market for foreign investments and attacking trade unions, practices ideologically aligned with the right. The party he leads has been repeatedly accused of building a system that favors practices associated with unchecked neoliberal capitalism, with consequences that marginalize the middle and lower classes.

Arlind Qori and Sofokli Meksi, both lecturers in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Tirana, in their 2023 book “The Albanian Limbo – From Bureaucratic Socialism to Neoliberal Capitalism”, write that the SP perceives itself as a modernizing and efficient ultra-capitalist party, with aggressive policies in gentrification processes and fiscal discipline for the poor, while granting favors to the “big bourgeoisie.” Qori is the leader of Lëvizja Bashkë (Together Movement), a left-wing political party in Albania.

In the same book, Qori and Meksi note that Albania’s two largest parties — SP and DP — despite their differences, share support from the oligarchy, which has been vital for both.

The DP was founded in 1990 during the collapse of communism in Albania. Since then, it has been in power for 13 years across two different periods. In recent years, the DP has faced significant turmoil and fragmentation. The first split occurred in 2021 between then-party leader Lulzim Basha and former Prime Minister and DP founder Sali Berisha, when Basha expelled Berisha from the parliamentary group after the U.S. State Department designated Berisha as persona non grata for alleged ties to corruption and organized crime.

These divisions clearly weakened the DP, which secured only 59 out of 140 possible seats in the 2021 elections. Since June 2024, the DP has been led again by former Prime Minister Berisha, who won the right to lead the party in court, while Basha left and formed a new party called Euroatlantic Democrats.

Against a weakened DP, in a political landscape long dominated by these two parties as the country’s main political forces, Rama and his party became such an entrenched political class — an establishment — that they seemed increasingly untouchable. Hasa describes the SP as “not just the most powerful party in Albania” but also as “de facto resembling a state-party at the moment.”

Over the years of SP and DP dominance in Albania’s political scene, new parties have emerged, but they were mostly formed by figures who did not challenge the old context. However, during the campaign for Albania’s parliamentary elections, set for this Sunday, May 11, several movements and parties have managed to impose their discourse more effectively than ever before. Comprising new figures who have not previously been part of central institutions, they are trying to offer an alternative to voters and are beginning to pose a threat not only to Rama’s establishment, but also to the entire political scene dominated by the two parties for 34 years since the fall of communism and the establishment of institutional democracy.

New voices raising

Two coalition parties that have particularly drawn attention during this election campaign are Shqipëria Bëhet (Albania Becomes) and Lëvizja Bashkë (Together Movement). Public opinion polls suggest that these parties are likely to enter parliament in these elections.

Formally composed of four political groups, one of the partners in the Shqipëria Bëhet coalition is Nisma Thurje (the Hashtag Initiative), a movement founded in 2014 that registered as a political party in 2021 to compete in that year’s parliamentary elections. Two years later, in local elections, Nisma Thurje won enough votes for five seats in the municipal councils of Tirana, Korça, Mirdita and Kukës.

Nisma Thurje gained initial popularity through anti-corruption protests and initiatives for legal reforms in electoral law. A significant achievement was its successful campaign for constitutional changes and electoral reform in July 2020, supported by over 50,000 citizens through a petition.

As a result, Albania’s electoral system underwent changes, introducing a mixed system with open and closed lists, partially allowing voters to choose the composition of parliament. Another change in the 2020 Electoral Code prohibits parties from running with joint lists.

However, political entities can collaborate by forming a joint entity or organizing around an existing party. This is the case with Shqipëria Bëhet — under whose umbrella, in addition to Nisma Thurje, are the Workers’ Rights League and the Legality Movement. It functions as a political union within a single electoral structure, where different groups operate together under the name and list of a single party, without being a formal coalition.

Meanwhile, Lëvizja Bashkë, led by Arlind Qori, was formerly a community-based left-wing radical movement known as the Political Organization (OP), primarily formed during protests in 2015 against the higher education law. At the time, students from various faculties in Tirana protested in front of the Prime Minister’s Office to oppose the Higher Education Reform initiated by the Rama government — which introduced a competitive funding model, placing public and private universities on the same level. This reform was perceived by students as a step toward the commercialization of education, risking harm to public universities already struggling with inadequate infrastructure and resources. Another wave of protests in 2018 led to some minor concessions from the government, but these were deemed insufficient by students.

After nearly a decade of activism, OP transformed into a political party in 2022, building on the popularity gained through protests linked to specific social groups like students, miners and pensioners. It is ideologically oriented as democratic left. In its first participation in local elections in 2023, Qori received 4.77% of the votes as a candidate for mayor, while the party secured one seat in the Tirana Municipal Council.

Endrit Shabani, the leader of Nisma Thurje, was among the party’s candidates who secured votes for a municipal councilor position in Tirana in 2023. While Nisma Thurje did not pass the threshold in the 2021 parliamentary elections, Shabani sees potential in the public’s general fatigue with the existing political class in Albania.

“We don’t threaten the old political class because we have some special ability,” says Shabani. “We threaten them simply because people are looking for an alternative to the old guard. They [the old political class] present themselves as an unchangeable natural fact. You don’t think about how to topple a mountain or stop an earthquake because you accept it as a natural fact. They can only do this if there’s no alternative.”

Meanwhile, Lëvizja Bashkë presented an electoral program during the campaign that outlines its political orientation and vision for the changes it aims to bring to Albania. The program centers on four pillars — a developmental state, a social state, the rule of law and democratic participation — with agriculture, industry, a new progressive taxation model and pensions highlighted as key elements of their vision.

Bora Mema, an activist and candidate for deputy from this party in the Tirana district, sees Lëvizja Bashkë’s journey as inseparable from its experience as an activist organization.

“Even in parliament, our journey will be similar,” she says. “We will be both deputies and activists on the streets. We will always have one foot in institutions and one foot on the street.”

According to its electoral program, the Shqipëria Bëhet coalition considers itself a center-right political force. According to Gresa Hasa, the coalition’s leader, Adriatik Lapaj, is ideologically right-wing with a “populist, conservative and nationalist rhetoric,” while its coalition partner, Nisma Thurje, is seen as a moderate alternative to traditional parties.

Throughout the election campaign, there has been frequent mention in Albania of the possibility of new parties uniting to form a stronger opposition front and maximize voting power in a proportional representation system with multiple electoral zones. This led to the formation of Shqipëria Bëhet, which brought together four different entities, registered as a single electoral unit. Shabani explains that he and the coalition’s leader, Lapaj, have ideological differences, but their focus is elsewhere for now.

“There are different approaches within the coalition: I am more liberal than Lapaj, who is more conservative, but these discussions I think are premature because our battle is from bottom to top — ordinary people versus an elite cemented at the top,” says Shabani.

Lëvizja Bashkë however, sees its path as independent. They refused to join the Shqipëria Bëhet coalition and did not envision joining any political grouping, even after the elections.

“We don’t believe Lëvizja Bashkë grows through compromise,” says Mema. “On the contrary, we believe our strength in growing and giving hope to people will be precisely in not making compromises. We want to come to power with transformative potential.”

Another novelty in these elections is within the DP itself. After the initial split between Basha and Berisha, in 2023, the DP fragmented further with the departure of two prominent figures, Agron Shehaj and Enkelejd Alibeaj — who are running with their own parties in these elections. Shehaj, a former MP, founded the Mundësia party (Opportunity Party), while Alibeaj, a former justice minister and MP, founded and leads the party Djathtas 1912 (Right 1912).

It remains to be seen whether these two parties will gain support from the traditional democratic electorate.

A shake-up of the old political class?

Unlike previous election campaigns, the one for the May 11 elections also marked a shift in Rama’s approach to opposition entities. While previously Rama did not mention new candidacies in public appearances, dismissing them as non-threatening to his power, during this campaign, he frequently referenced them, suggesting he has begun to view their candidacies differently.

Moreover, throughout the campaign, Shqipëria Bëhet and Lëvizja Bashkë have faced continuous verbal attacks from both the SP and the DP.

During an election rally in the city of Skrapar, Rama said: “Some little birds have emerged. Not possible, not impossible, not together, not apart. They’ll turn the sea into yogurt, and there will be no more corruption, no more injustice. No more high prices, no more anything. Give them your vote so they can grab a seat in parliament. They say, ‘We are the young ones.’ They’re only young in age.”

Shabani from Shqipëria Bëhet sees Rama’s words as a strategy to legitimize attacks.

“When Rama comes out and attacks you, the school principal, the inspector, the minister, the deputy, the branch chairman, the mayor — they all get the message that this is the enemy that must be obstructed,” says Shabani. “For example, we were in Elbasan, and they cut the power, leaving the entire boulevard in total darkness just to disrupt our event. Rama doesn’t need to tell them to do it; they get the message from Rama that these are the enemies. When Rama doesn’t say it, and only analysts do, it remains an opinion that reaches the voter, but when Rama says it, it mobilizes his entire army to oppose you.”

For Enton Abilekaj, editor-in-chief of the independent media platform dosja.al in Albania, the attacks personally articulated by Rama against these parties show that he feels threatened by them.

“Rama is the greatest gauge of public sentiment,” he says. “He realized there was a lot of attention toward the new parties this time, which mostly came through protests over social issues related to students and pensioners; he understood he could no longer ignore them. He then promised the same things the small parties were saying needed to be done.”

Abilekaj refers to the pensioners’ protests organized by Lëvizja Bashkë during the last quarter of 2024 and early 2025, which demanded pension increases and indexation. The protests elevated pensioners, numbering around 800,000, as a significant social group ahead of the May elections. In a parliamentary session discussing the 2025 budget, Prime Minister Rama responded to the protests by promising bonuses for pensioners. Over his 12 years in governance, Albania continues to have one of the lowest pensions in Europe.

Given the complex electoral system and ongoing demographic changes, polls in Albania have not yet reached a satisfactory level of reliability. However, political analysts believe these parties will secure at least one deputy each in these elections, marking a new phase for them as parties that have never before been represented at the national level.

Hasa shares a similar view. “Although they won’t immediately undermine the dominance of the old parties, [the new parties] will create a symbolic break and pose a challenge to the legitimacy of the old parties, serving as a mirror to the lack of structural reforms and social discontent,” she says.

Abilekaj sees the potential inclusion of these parties in parliament as significant beyond ideological discussions. He cites the example of former deputy Ben Blushi, who was a PS deputy until 2016, when he left the party and continued as an independent deputy.

“The year Ben Blushi was an independent deputy, we saw what it means to have a new voice in parliament,” says Abilekaj. “He challenged both sides, was against the establishment and was the most interesting figure in parliament. This year, we have several attempts, and it’s the first time new parties are expected to enter parliament. The ice of the establishment is breaking.”

In their book, Qori and Meksi view the decades-old establishment as shaped by an ideological convergence between the SP and DP regarding economic structures. While both parties have accepted capitalism and neoliberalism as uncontested, their stability relies on clientelism and services provided to economic oligarchs.

“Thus, they lower the cost of losing power by helping each other secure funds from oligarchs and not pursuing each other criminally, despite the strong corruption allegations they constantly exchange,” they write.

It is precisely this transactional relationship that new political voices have the potential to change. While their performance is not expected to bring immediate radical transformation, their entry into parliament could introduce new forms of discussion and accountability, offering the country a chance to renew its political scene.

Feature Image: Atdhe Mulla / K2.0.

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