In such elections, victory can only be Edi Rama's.

Alfred Lela

So far, there is a trend of votes in favor of Edi Rama.
This trend suggests a loss for the opposition and a victory for the government.

It remains unclear how the mini-parties — those of Shehaj, Lapaj-Shabani, and Qori — will finish.

What is clear is that Tom Doshi with the PSD will likely emerge as the third-largest party in Albania, becoming a potential kingmaker.
Even though, as it seems, a kingmaker unable to crown a king, since neither side of the spectrum is likely to need him to form a government.
Doshi might only come into play if Rama gets close to a supermajority, which could allow him to threaten constitutional changes.

The Socialists will feel triumphant in the coming days, and the Democrats, defeated.
But it is not an exaggeration to say that Albania lost in all of this.
Not because PD–ASHM lost, but because in elections like yesterday’s, any opposition coalition would have lost, and the only winner would still have been Edi Rama.

Why?
Because political playbooks around the world do not yet recognize a politician who wins without a program.
Rama’s rhetoric avoided offering any platform and instead focused on geopolitical speculation — Albania’s EU membership bid, which, first of all, is a national goal (every party supports integration), and secondly, is not in the hands of the government.
That decision depends not only on Albania’s performance, but also on a complex conclave of EU member states, each with veto power.

On the other hand, Rama offered a repertoire of jokes, insults, and bullying, but this was not even the core typology of his campaign.
The Prime Minister shamelessly and unrestrainedly used the state apparatus in service of his electoral agenda.
Criminal gangs, from south to north, were clearly on his side.
The thugs standing in front of the polling station in Vora yesterday are not a sign of a normal Albania — they are the recycled machinery of political intimidation, playing out once again under the principle: “the end justifies the means.”

If those Vora gangsters call themselves “citizens,” just remember the case of Jurgis Çyrbja, who was placed on Rama’s list by the request of the local criminal groups.

It’s not only the periphery that has been criminalized and distorted the electoral reality.
Anyone who watched television yesterday saw grotesque and dramatic scenes in the heart of Tirana:
Senior administrators in black hoodies, overweight customs directors, feline MPs of the ruling party, tense and aggressive women — all caught on camera running, hiding, snarling, threatening — in broad daylight.

The case of the illegal PS campaign office in Municipal Unit No. 5 is just the surface sign that elections in Albania are not a contest, not a debate, not about platforms — they are a struggle to retain power at any cost, with power as its end.

In that sense, it bears repeating: in elections like these, the victory will always go to Edi Rama.

What remains with us, after this victory/defeat, is the reality that this kind of election has now been normalized.
Anyone who still retains a moral sense of shame must have cringed at yesterday’s scenes, starring government employees and local gangs, now elevated to national assets by Edi Rama.

The winners may smile, but they deliver little more than a grimace at Albania’s expense.
Depopulation and criminalization will remain, even after May 11, as two of the country’s great national challenges.
Even greater ones, paradoxically or not, because the party that just won is the very party that normalized both.