As expected, Ziadin Sela, former leader of the Alliance of Albanians, announced that he will join the ruling DUI party in the coming elections. Sela tried to create a faction in the Alliance of Albanians, opposed to the current leader Arben Taravari, after Taravari decided to join the opposition Albanian bloc VLEN.

Taravari and Sela are in dispute over the leadership of the party – both organized meetings of the Alliance’s central committee with their loyalists and both insist that their meeting was legitimate. But they will both be able to field candidates within the larger groupings – Taravari with VLEN and Sela with DUI.

The Alliance of Albanians was formed on the basis of the now weakened DPA party, as a principal Albanian opposition movement that exposes corruption and abuse of office by DUI. But DUI leader Ali Ahmeti was able to use the unprecedented level of state capture his party has achieved after over 20 years in power to get initially Taravari, and now Sela, to support him. Taravari eventually realized that the party is losing its edge among opposition minded voters and decided to accept the presidential nomination from the VLEN bloc and to field candidates on the joint VLEN list for Parliament.

Facing serious competition for the Albanian vote for the first time in over a decade, Ahmeti immediately reacted to this news by activating Sela, who accused Taravari of violating the party position that they run independently in the elections – a move that was clearly meant to help DUI by dividing the Albanian opposition. Each faction won the support of a couple of Government ministers from the Alliance, and the two who sided with Taravari were quickly dismissed from office.