Giving politics a bad name

Countries all around us are presently discussing how to get out of Covid-19 while saving jobs and businesses.

Instead, we spent the last days learning how politicians allegedly aided the biggest fraud of public money in Maltese history with the complicity of the state’s own energy company.

Most of us grumble about the level of local politics, we want to see better people taking the front seat, but how can any professional worth her or his salt consider politics when this is the rotten standard they are setting?

Politics should be about competing ideas for the choices to be made to advance society. How shall we turn the impact of Covid-19 into opportunity? Maybe using EU funds to promote more efficient teleworking. How shall we avoid another pandemic wave? Did we seriously discuss contact tracing technology in Malta? Are the vouchers enough? Will they provide the right stimulus to the services industry? And how about all the other retail not in hospitality? These choices should be making our main headlines this week. But no. Our headlines speak about Konrad, Keith and Joseph, the Petrus wine and the secret companies. Politics in Malta is no longer about the people but about the politicians themselves and their excesses.

I believe in another kind of politics. Maybe it is one which will never make the headlines. It does

I believe in another kind of politics. Maybe it is one which will never make the headlines. It does not involve massive scandals but small steps forward for society.

not involve massive scandals but small steps forward for society. This week I followed closely the European Commission recommendations on digital contact tracing to avert and stop at the root a new pandemic wave. I spoke to two tech companies in Malta interested in learning more about the European standard. They should find a government ready to listen to their proposals, not one distracted by court revelations going to the core of its morality.

Before I took the leap into local politics I used to look with a smile at the party events and the all-so-regular coffee mornings where it is all claps and cheers. Those settings have one clear and strict rule, the idolisation of the speaker no matter what he or she might be saying. I thought that I would never entertain those silly settings, without contradiction, without real debate. A week as a candidate was enough to realise that I was in the wrong, that coffee mornings and the party gatherings where a fundamental necessity to drum up support, to start the little flames that then set the field fire to change things.

So all those who want to put their name on a ballot list need to cultivate rooms where they will be lauded and applauded without contradiction. But does that excuse anyone from doing away with all sense of objectivity? The temptation is huge if you run with a party commanding a 90,000 vote lead in the surveys. That can lead you to believe that no matter what you say in the face of damning contrary evidence you will still be applauded. Such is the case of Konrad Mizzi who writes with a totally mysterious sense of warped truth on social media telling us he is virgin white on the alleged Montenegro scam when we know since years his listing 17 black as a source company for his ‘populating his assets’. Konrad Mizzi and Joseph Muscat and many others who tragically continue threading their path speak to us as if we are at their coffee mornings. Well, we are not, and we will hold you accountable till you face justice for every possible misdeed or lie you told.

Meanwhile it is our responsibility to counter the bad name they give politics and Malta for that matter. The Nationalist Party is not immune to corruption and misgivings of accountability. We also need to be judged constantly on whether we are setting the good example. For what I see in my day to day collaboration within the party I sense a general motivation to be the alternative to the sleazy politics we have grown accustomed to. Together with another thirteen colleagues, I have joined the PN policy clusters where seasoned Members of Parliament are now closely collaborating with activists and experts to shape a new kind of politics. A politics by the people and for the people. It is on us to restore trust in politics. If you are reading this and you share any part of it, do get in touch, there is a place for you as well.