Parliamentary elections for a Constituent Assembly were held in Albania on 2 December 1945. Voters were presented with a single list from the Democratic Front, organized and led by the Communist Party of Albania. The Front won all 82 seats. Background As the Albanian National Liberation War of 1941-1944 came to a close, an interim Democratic Government of Albania was established on 20 October 1944 by a second meeting of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council (which had been established in Përmet in May that year) Its Prime Minister was Enver Hoxha, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Albania. During the National Liberation War the Communist Party was the only consistent anti-fascist political and military force. Two rival organizations, the Balli Kombëtar and the Legaliteti, had their prestige amongst the populace tarnished through collaboration with the German occupiers against the partisan forces led by the Communists. By the end of the war both organizations had been defeated. The Democratic Front, which succeeded the wartime National Liberation Front in August 1945, had no other political parties within it besides the Communist Party of Albania, with bourgeois-democratic and general patriotic persons being united within the Front as non-Party members. "The Communist Party did not exclude cooperation with anti-fascist political parties and bringing them into the National Liberation Front," Albanian Professor Ndreçi Plasari stated in 1974, "if such parties had been created." In September 1945 a third meeting of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council was held, resulting in the adoption of a law on the formation of a Constituent Assembly as well as laws on the election of representatives to this Assembly and on the list of candidates on the basis of "general, equal, direct and secret ballot, and the necessary guarantees for the free exercise of the citizens' electoral rights." At this meeting, however, the liberal Education Minister in the Democratic Government, Gjergj Kokoshi, criticized the electoral law, calling it "anti-democratic" and calling for the Communist Party to play a secondary rather than primary role in the affairs of the Front. Hoxha responded to these criticisms by saying: "The people organized in the Democratic Front, present their own candidates to the Assembly in the lists of the Front. If those who are outside the Front desire to be elected, let them present their candidatures individually. The draft law recognizes them this right and, indeed, will defend it." Kokoshi replied that independent candidates "are