In the spring elections, party leaders will no longer have the privilege of running in more than one district at the same time.

The political agreement on the electoral reform has also included this change, which has passed silently by the two largest parties.

In the past elections, this exclusive right was used by the chairman of the Socialist Party, Edi Rama, and the leader of the LSI, Monika Kryemadhi.

To increase the votes, the prime minister ran in Vlora and Durrës and in the end chose to be the latter’s deputy, while in the southern city the mandate went to a lady.

Kryemadhi ran in Elbasan and Fier, but released the mandate of Myzeqe, putting someone else in the parliament.

The removal of this article from the Electoral Code is bad news for new or small parties, which could run for the leader in different areas, to benefit from his image and to accumulate mandates in some districts.

Without this right, it will be difficult for the new parties, which only have the leader and not the other members of the team, to win mandates in those areas where the president is not running.

This tactic, which gave an advantage to party leaders to win mandates in several constituencies in a row and then abandon them to introduce other supporters of theirs, who had not directly won, into the Assembly, was criticized by OSCE-ODIHR.

Socialist Party and Democratic Party have abolished this article, it is hard to understand if they were worried by the recommendations of internationals or by the chances that this formula could give to new parties.