Seventy-One Votes in Tirana

Albanian police fired rubber bullets at protesters in Tirana on Saturday 17 October, the first time they had been used since the demonstrations began, AFP reported. The national police chief, Skender Hita, confirmed it at a news conference and said they had been deployed “in a limited manner,” Al Jazeera reported. It was the fifth consecutive day of clashes in the capital.

The protesters want Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign. He has said he will not. Albania’s constitution sets out how a prime minister can be made to leave office, and every route it offers runs through a vote in the Assembly.

Five days in the capital

Hita said 167 people had been arrested over five days and 132 officers injured, and that seven officers had been suspended pending investigations into whether they exceeded their authority. On Wednesday 14 October alone, police arrested 65 people and Tirana’s hospitals treated 89, including 61 police officers, according to police and Health Ministry figures reported by Al Jazeera. The unrest has spread beyond the capital. Reuters, in a report carried by The Star, described clashes in Lezha and protests in Elbasan, Shkodra and Korca.

The grievances are stated the same way across the reports: university fees, poor facilities, scarce jobs, alleged corruption, and the sale of parts of the southern coast for a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner. Reuters said it found no evidence of wrongdoing by Kushner, who is not directly involved in the villagers’ dispute. The student protests have joined months of rallies by the Flamingo movement, which began as a campaign against that development. “We’ve been protesting peacefully for 140 days, and nothing was heard,” a 19-year-old protester who gave her name as Klea told Reuters.

What the prime minister has said

Rama, prime minister since 2013, won a fourth term in May 2025. “As for calls for my resignation, governments change through democratic elections. Last year, we had elections, not a revolution,” he told Reuters, as quoted by Al Jazeera. In a written statement he said: “My responsibility is to listen, address legitimate concerns and keep Albania moving forward.” He has said he is ready to discuss education costs, denied that his government is corrupt, and accused his conservative opponents of encouraging the violence. “We will not bow to violence,” he wrote on Facebook.

The election he refers to was held on 11 May 2025. Central Election Commission results compiled by IFES ElectionGuide give the Socialist Party 83 of the Assembly’s 140 seats and the Democratic Party-led Alliance for a Majestic Albania 50. The Social Democratic Party won three, the Opportunity Party two, and Together and the Albania Becomes Initiative one each. The Assembly has moved a little since. When it passed the territorial reform on 9 October, Balkanweb reported that the Socialist parliamentary group had 82 seats and that the Social Democrats’ three votes took the total to 85, as this publication reported at the time.

The constructive vote

Article 105 of the constitution, in the English translation published by the Constitute Project, lets one-fifth of the members present a motion of no confidence in the prime minister “by proposing a new Prime Minister.” It then says: “The Assembly may vote a motion of no confidence towards the Prime Minister only by electing a new Prime Minister with the votes of more than half of all the members of the Assembly.” The President decrees the change within 10 days. Until a new government is appointed, Article 106 keeps the prime minister and ministers in office.

These are this publication’s calculations from those rules. One-fifth of 140 is 28 members to table a motion. More than half of all members is 71, and the count is of all members, not of those present. On Balkanweb’s figure of 82, there are 58 members outside the Socialist group. A motion supported by every one of them would still need 13 Socialists to vote for a successor to their own leader. If the Social Democrats stayed with the government, as they did on 9 October, the number would be 16.

The other route belongs to the prime minister. Under Article 104 he may put a motion of confidence to the Assembly; if fewer than half of all members vote for it, he must ask the President within 48 hours to dissolve the Assembly, and the President must do so within 10 days. Article 65 then requires elections no later than 45 days after dissolution. A motion of confidence cannot be tabled while a no-confidence motion is being examined. Nothing in the reports suggests Rama intends to call one.

What is not known

None of the reports cited here says that a motion under Article 105 has been tabled, or that any Socialist deputy has said he or she would support one. Al Jazeera reported that Rama was due to meet his parliamentary group on Thursday 15 October, as protesters circulated an ultimatum demanding his resignation by 1pm. What was said at that meeting has not been reported in the sources used here.

The constitutional text used here is a translation of the constitution as amended through 2016, and later amendments may have changed its wording. The protesters have set deadlines measured in hours. The constitution sets one measured in votes, and on the last published count the Socialist group holds twelve more seats than it needs to block it.