100 days or 16 years?

Alfred Lela

Marshall McLuhan, one of the most brilliant minds in the field of communication, once said something that has become axiomatic: “The medium is the message.”
Simply put, this means that a message is not just what is said, but who says it. In this context, when Berisha and Rama, the two major rivals in this electoral campaign, speak, it is not just about what they say, but who is speaking — their qualities, credibility, and political histories.

In more than one sense, both are in a struggle against time, and time is against them.
Berisha, due to biological age; Rama, due to time in power.
The former is 80 years old; the latter has been continuously in executive power since 1998, 27 years, 12 of them as Prime Minister, since 2013.

It is precisely in this battle — their relationship with time, the one opponent no one can beat — that we can begin to understand who is the right candidate to govern.
In Sali Berisha’s vocabulary, time is precious — it cannot be wasted, and it certainly cannot be taken or given away for free.
In his promises — not just in the intensity of recent weeks, but since December last year — he articulates the “100 days” as a unit of political time.
He asks for 100 days to deliver the Dignity Package.
The same for the fight against crime and corruption ("cleaning house," borrowing from Trump’s phrasing), and more.

Berisha, therefore, is a finite candidate — operating within the boundaries of what is concrete and achievable.

Edi Rama, on the other hand, is the opposite.
He operates under a "God complex" — for him, time is his own, infinite, and within it, he offers the infinite.
He speaks, for example, of “Albania 2030” — a station one year beyond the mandate he is asking for now, as if to say he controls not only this term, but the next.
What he does not say is that if his time in power is perceived as endless, the time of those without power — the people — is expiring.

The farmer, the youngster, the shopkeeper, and the retired woman do not have the luxury of infinite time.
They need something now. The knock of everyday struggles is heard every hour of every day.
They have no one to gift them a bottle of expensive wine, build them a beautiful villa, or offer them a detox session.

Their problems — big or small — can only be solved by themselves, if they have a government that, even if it cannot help, at least does not make things worse.

So, this election pits two men against each other, both asking for time. Time in office — and, more importantly, your time.
Sali Berisha is asking for 100 days — a self-imposed limit and a test of responsibility. Edi Rama, after 12 years in power, is asking for another open-ended mandate. For now, he’s labeled it “2030”, but he can rebrand it however he pleases. To him, time has no weight and no value.

But for you, I think — it does.

I understand this may sound like a philosophical reflection, but it’s grounded in a logic both simple and profound. It’s about an infinite substance—time - that is exhaustible for the living.
For all of us, without exception.

Sali Berisha and Edi Rama are asking you for time. To whom will you give it —the man who asks for 100 days, or the one who asks for 16+ years?