Media dubbed it a ‘summer soap opera’, but the infighting in the Albania Becomes [Nisma Shqiperia Behet] coalition following Albania’s parliamentary election in May 2025 revealed a hard truth about the country’s politics: the people running for parliament or local councils aren’t always those who end up filling the seats.
In the case of Albania Becomes, the two parties inside the alliance fell out after some of their designated ‘placeholders’ refused to quit to make way for more senior party figures.
More generally, the practice disproportionately affects women: parties across the political spectrum regularly put forward women in local elections in order to comply with a 50/50 gender quota required by the Electoral Code, only for them to resign after winning election and cede their posts to men.
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