Albanian Socialist MP Candidate Praises Communist Dictator Hoxha

Prime Minister Edi Rama presents candidates Luljeta Bozo (left) and Najada Como. Photo: Edi Rama/Facebook.

"If you put them on a scale, for me he has more positives than negatives," Bozo told Albania's Public Television after being asked what she thought about Hoxha and the damage he did to the country.

She also claimed that communism was a "constitutional dictatorship" and that it "developed Albania" and built up its industry.

Nostalgia about the communist era in Albania is not uncommon, and there are former communists in the country's parliament. But political candidates and elected officials rarely express outright praise for Hoxha's authoritarian regime, under which 6,000 Albanians were murdered and tens of thousands made to do forced labour in mines, construction and agriculture.

Some commentators called upon Bozo to resign from the candidacy and Gazmend Kapllani, an Albanian writer based in Chicago, called upon voters to punish the Socialist Party at the ballot box in April.

"From now on, it is a moral duty to vote against these necrophiles in power, vote against the SP!" Kapllani wrote on Facebook.

Critics claimed that the Socialist Party had failed to distance themselves from Bozo's comments, and that Prime Minister Rama was trying to build electoral support using so-called 'identity politics' as he does not have the policies to address the country's economic and social problems after eight years in power.

"He runs a government that is worn out and has no ideas. In this way, supporting Enverism galvanises his base," Celo Hoxha, head of the Institute for the Study of the Crimes of Communism, a publicly-funded body in Tirana, told BIRN.

Tirana-based historian Hasan Bello said that Bozo's comments reflect not...