[1] Bakalli began his political career in the youth organization of the League of Communists of Kosovo, eventually becoming its leader in 1961.

[2] Bakalli led the Communist Party in Kosovo during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but resigned after disagreeing with the way the 1981 protests by ethnic Albanian students were handled by Kosovo's own police, headed by Rahman Morina.

He was after that allowed to work in the province's Science Association until retirement, but was forced out when Slobodan Milošević increased Serbian control over Kosovo in the late 1980s.

In 2002, Bakalli was the first witness to testify at The Hague International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the trial of Slobodan Milošević.

Bakalli succumbed to throat cancer on April 14, 2006, at the age of 70 following a prolonged treatment.