Prime Minister Edi Rama secured 85 votes for the controversial territorial reform, despite criticism of the new map even within the ranks of his own party.
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The new territorial map, which provides for the merger of 15 small municipalities, was approved at midnight on Thursday with 85 votes in favor. The votes came from the 82 SP lawmakers and the seats held by Tom Doshi’s Social Democratic Party.
The SP’s unilateral initiative was strongly opposed by the opposition, by the municipal councils of the municipalities that will be merged, and by local communities in these areas, who protested outside parliament on Thursday.
Voices of dissent also emerged from within the SP during the plenary session, but their positions were not reflected in the final vote after Prime Minister Edi Rama warned that they would be expelled from the parliamentary group.
“He (Rama) said: if you vote against it, you are out of this parliamentary group,” said veteran lawmaker Erion Braçe during a media appearance just hours before the vote in parliament. In the end, Braçe voted in accordance with the prime minister’s wishes and contrary to his publicly stated position.
Expressing strong reservations about the SP initiative, Braçe said in parliament on Thursday that this was not a “reform,” but rather “the drawing of a new map,” without taking into account the fact that it would change the lives of people in the municipalities being merged.
“The map, which has been tested many times, is temporary and unstable and entirely inadequate as a reform,” he criticized.
MP Elisa Spiropali, who for months had attempted to establish a critical profile within the SP, also ultimately voted in favor, even though she had warned otherwise during her speech.
“We are neither cardboard cutouts nor people without responsibility. The way you address us is revolting,” Spiropali said during the session.
Other Socialist lawmakers who had voiced criticism and called for the will of residents in the areas where they had been elected to be taken into account also backed down at the last moment, submitting to the party’s political decision despite the constitutional guarantees that lawmakers express their individual will.
Belinda Balluku, the former deputy prime minister under investigation for corruption and violations of equality in public tenders, also voted in favor of the new map. She appeared in parliament on Thursday evening after weeks of absence.
Prime Minister Rama commented ironically on the silencing of critical voices in his party.
“Beyond all the internal debates, external speculation and the trials of a time muddled by all sorts of dirty hands, some visible and some invisible but no longer undiscovered, last night’s vote in parliament gave Albania another modernizing boost,” he wrote on the X platform, adding that “on the other hand, it once again showed all those who needed to see it that they should never ‘count without the innkeeper’ when it comes to the Socialist Party.”
Rama has led the SP since 2005, when its former historic chairman, Fatos Nano, resigned after losing that year’s parliamentary elections. In a party that had seen political debates and factions for years, Rama built an authoritarian figure in which party institutions and internal debate have almost ceased to exist.
