Griselda Qosja is a research associate at the University of Hamburg, Faculty of Law.
Today’s Albanian election sees Edi Rama’s Partia Socialiste running for a third term, two years after a powerful student movement forced the sacking of half his cabinet. In one of Europe’s poorest countries, green shoots of protest are finally challenging the parties that led Albania to neoliberal capitalism.
Enver Hoxha’s Albania is mostly famous for its bureaucratic paranoia, symbolized by its hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers. His wife Nexhmije was one of the ruling party’s leading figures — and to her dying day defended the brutal measures taken in the name of socialism.