Sali Berisha: The youngest "old man" of a generation that needs to be brought back

2025-05-08 10:03:00, Opinione Melisa Braci

Sali Berisha: The youngest "old man" of a generation that needs to be
Yesterday, as a passionate "surgeon", he built modern Albania: roads, universities, hospitals, infrastructure and most importantly - sustainable institutions. Today, as the last guardian of the conscience of a nation facing moral and institutional decadence, he is trying to restore what many have lost: the dignity of this people.

He is the same, but times have changed, and with them the burden that these elections carry has grown. He (or “Ay” as you are used to hearing him) is Sali Berisha.

Do you know which political generation Sali Berisha belongs to?

The generation of Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Merkel, Harper, Silvio Berlusconi and George HW Bush. A generation born of great crises and for great crises. The generation that understood that policymaking, unlike political speech, is for statesmen — not image managers.

While many of these leaders today are either no longer alive, or have retreated into the armchairs of memories, perhaps because they had someone to leave behind, or simply because the comfort of the "senator's" chairs is much easier than the efforts to fight for a cause, or because they escaped with accusations, Sali Berisha, as the youngest elder of this generation, is being re-attacked.

Who would have thought, four years ago, when the Democratic Party was trying to put the "Prime Minister's jacket" on a political body without a backbone, that in 2025 the only hope for the right and for Albania would once again bear the same name with which the first hour of freedom began in this country: Sali Berisha?
Sali Berisha decided, at great cost, to make the strongest political, personal and party turn.
He managed to rehabilitate his figure at the peak of activism. He was declared "non grata" at his most passive point. He was expelled from his party by the one who supported him the most. He was left without a seal, without offices.
Today, he is rebuilding his figure and integrity through confrontation. This is not only a story of resistance, it is living proof that he who manages to regain his honor can also restore the honor of an entire nation.

He is not a symbol of nostalgia, but living proof that strength, when it comes from conscience, never grows old. And in this final battle, he does not fight to turn back the times, but to give the future a better direction.

Because this is not a competition between the old and the new – but a confrontation between the foundation and the facade. And it is here that the undeniable contrast arises: the deep dichotomy between Berisha's state-forming class and Edi Rama's empty aestheticism.

Berisha is the man of words that carries weight and memory – while Rama is a master of words that creates smoke, illusion, decor. While one promises hospitals, schools, roads, institutions, reforms, the other paints facades, demolishes theaters and makes scenography. Berisha's Albania is the Albania of foundations; Rama's Albania is the Albania of temporary decorations, where colors cover the ruin, where the light of the projectors camouflages the darkness of state failure.
These choices are not at all easy for Sali Berisha.

It is strange to hear the Berisha of 2025 talking about democracy, mission and last hope, when the Berisha of 2005, 2009 and 2013 had the following main themes: zero tolerance for corruption and roads (even though he was in government).

In fact, these keywords best show where Albania has fallen today: discussing democracy, the mission of the "oldest young man" in the current political scene, and the last hope for the opposition to survive.

This time, unlike other times, Sali Berisha is not facing a rival party, but an apparatus. A system that no longer governs, but rules. Where tenders are more important than the constitution, where oligarchs decide economic destinies, where justice has become a tool of power and where political punishment replaces any fair and independent trial.

For more than a decade, Albania has entered a phase of rapid slide: towards state capture. And this is no longer a matter of ideology, nor of party competition. This is a matter of survival for the republic. Because when institutions serve a man and not the citizens, the word “state” loses all meaning.

In this reality, every citizen — right, left, gray, disappointed — must ask themselves: if we don't stop this destruction now, when will we stop it? And who will stop it?
Not those who kept quiet to preserve comfort. Not those who used ideals as springboards for personal power. And not those who wait with their hands in their pockets for the world to change itself. And not those who seek perfection. The search for perfection in this case is the alibi for surrender.

Those who have courage will stop it. Those who, although tired, do not give up. Those who rise up not because they are perfect, but because they can no longer bear the destruction of a system built with effort, or worse, the destruction of a nation. And Sali Berisha is one of them.

The return of Sali Berisha is not simply a new political chapter. It is an act of national redemption. It is a strong call for a moral awakening at a time when Albania has become an occupied land. Because what is happening today is no longer simply bad governance – it is a grotesque theater where Edi Rama has taken the institutions, the economy, justice, the media and the conscience of society hostage. What should not have happened has happened: the state has been dissolved in the name of a single man.

Edi Rama is no longer prime minister: he is a system. A system built on fear, on servility, on propaganda and on exclusion. Democracy has been transformed into choreography, elections into a formality, the citizen into a television spectator. Free speech has been stifled not with bullets, but with contempt.
On May 11, it is not an ordinary vote. It is a wake-up call. It is a call to sober up. Because if it doesn't happen now, it will be too late. We cannot wait for the roof to catch fire to realize that the house is burning.

On May 11, a vote for Sali Berisha is a vote for an Albania that refuses to surrender. It is a vote against arrogance. Against crime covered up with sweet words. Against an elite that says "that's all we have", when the nation deserves more. It is a vote for justice, not for revenge; for freedom, not for revenge; for confrontation, not for false reconciliation.
Don't stand with your hands in your pockets and your heart in your throat !/CNA