Saturday, 22nd March 2008
Not a case of mere Ole’ Ole’!
The party flags have been folded into a drawer and the ballot papers in Naxxar have been taken away to another room, all of us have returned to our every day routine and regular Sunday afternoon outing have equally ended. Yet, this election has definitely taught us something. We are not dumb. Through their votes, almost 93% of those eligible to vote have sent their message.
Students have been an indispensable asset for the Nationalist party. With dozens of young volunteers helping out and several hundreds attending the regular daily so-called Taht it-Tinda meetings and the mass meetings, students have made their voice heard by, very evidently siding with who really gave them the attention and the limelight. With 17, 000 young first-time voters, Jason Micallef and his clan ought to get a lesson or two from Joe Saliba on how to run a campaign. Mr. Micallef direct attacks have got you no where. When will you change learn? Will you make your party go through another electoral defeat to realise this?
The winds of change were blowing hard during the few weeks prior to the campaign. With Dr. Sant parading his ‘Pjan ghal Bidu Gdid’ and Dr. Gonzi promising new blood, irrespective for which party they voted, the electorate showed that it is time to bring new faces to the limelight. Dismally, this has seen valuable former members of parliament being shoved to the side. Were they incompetent at their job or did they have far too much on their plate to bother with coffee mornings and countless house visits? An analysis of the result seems to indicate that those who had the largest portfolios struggled with being elected, if at all? How could someone like Austin Gatt get elected at the 18th count or Louis Galea, Michael Frendo and Helen D’Amato fail to make it at all? Unfortunately, the Maltese seems to cling on firmly to clientelism and as much as they complain about it, they just won’t let go of it. Shame on us.
Negative campaigning seems to work wonders with the electorate, fortunately not with Dr. Gonzi who was careful in not choosing Cabinet members in terms of electoral support but rather based on what he deemed them as being more fit for. Hopefully, Dolores Cristina will be gracing Students’ House with her presence to discuss policies with members of the student organisations. This former educator has shown to be very competent as Minister for Family and Social Solidarity, let’s hope for the best for the next five years! As for the Malta Labour Party, Carmelo Abela has always shown his willingness to attend activities on campus, one can only hope that this election serves the MLP a lesson and either Dr Abela or the successive Education shadow minister is all ears to hear our complaints and proposals.
Politics does not take place once every year. Politics is what ensures we have lectures, have stipends and can attend University. Our duty is not merely to cast our vote when called at the polls. Our duty is to come forward with suggestions and make our own politics to remove what is stagnant and upsetting in an attempt to move forward. We must not care only about getting our stipends in our pockets but about ensuring that our needs are not at the mercy of those hierarchically above us but we are able to obtaining by doing.
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Comments
I am not going to enter into a 'who did best when' kind of argument. I first entered into an exchange with you because of what I perceive to be an absolute stance of PN all good MLP all bad. In my opinion this kind of stance is not helpful for a healthy debate. I tried to point out a few good things attributed to Labour just to balance the argument. I do not intend to be a referee at an MLP vs PN match. I lived in the 70s under labour and experienced my own share of negatives. The home I was improving before marriage was requisitioned and I had to rush my marriage date to make sure that I did not lose my home (you can add requisition orders to your list).
I was not selected to join a specific college possibly because I was labeled as a Nationalist. A year later I applied for a job for which I was well qualified and was selected) and experienced a good carrier. I was proud to see our national carrier carry Maltese tourists to destinations such as London and Rome. At the time it was amazing to see a Maltese pilot captain a plane that landed at Heathrow. I saw Maltese being promoted to managerial jobs that were until then the exclusive domain of non-maltese.
I had friends applying their considerable technical qualities in many a manufacturing concern (as I had friends who were sewing machine operators who earned Lm3 a week in the first months of a Mintoff Government who saw their wages doubling plus to Lm8 in the matter of a couple of months). Today I see youngsters exploited through the abused self-employed system, a system that our PM promises to reform. I also know people who earn a significant salary having developed new skills…and the world goes on.
My point is that life is black and white and a large chunk of grey. A healthy debate is able to evaluate good bad and in betweens to arrive at opinions; to understand prime movers so that we all move onto better pastures.
Regards
Danny, you cannot deny that life today, in Malta is a heck of a lot better than life in the 70's and 80's. Store shelves are chock full of merchandise, there is freedom of speech and expression almost without limit, the infrastucture is modern, jobs galore, half the population if not more goes abroad for a holiday at least once a year, new cars everywhere etc. I know what you are goinng to say - people are borrowing to get all these toys etc. - true, but they borrow because they feel secure and are capable of making payments plus, they know that if they lose a job, most probably there will be another one waiting for them. During Labour's time, the major solution was either parastatal labour forces paid an allowance as opposed to a wage, and emigration. Today we need to import labour!
Please don't start me off to make comparisons! You may not recall the 70's and 80's but surely your memory will remind you of the short 22 months of not too long ago when unemployment rose, investment, foreign and domestic dried up, electricity bills were higher than today, and that is when the highest price of a barrel of oil was $16.00 - and you tell us that in those months Malta did not take a step backwards? I wish it hadn't!
In your original contribution you implied that under a Labour administration Malta always took impressive strides backwards? Now the always/backwards strikes me as being a gross exaggeration. I therefore tried to rationalise the argument and had to refer to 30 years ago because Labour has not been in Government since.
If, however, you truely believe your doomsday scenarios in so far as Labour Governments are concerned, than so be it, I will not upset your view. In which case I will not be surprised at your assertion that the 141,888 who voted labour ' must not have children'. If you think that this too is a reasonable statement, than so be it, we live in a free world.
Cheers
That being said, why does Mr. Attard skim over so fast regarding the turbulent years of Mintoff? The violence, the beatings, the censorship of the Press, the burning of The Times, the lack of freedom etc., seem of little consequence to him. Or, is it an attempt to take advantage of the students and the young set who were not even born then, and make it appear that all this was fiction? If we go into percentages, may I ask Mr. Farrugia by what percentage the university student population increased over that in the 80's? What, 1000%?
Mr. Attard, today's youth appreciate the stability, the peace of mind, the opportunities of education and good paying jobs which were not available under Labour governments. They no longer look forward to shoe making and garment sewing akin to sweat shops in third world countries. They look forward to professional jobs and jobs in IT related areas which will be shortly in great demand once SmartCity will commence operations.
What all this means is that a vast proportion of the electorate is unqualified to objectively select the CEO most appropriate to safeguard a nation’s economic well being. In spite of this personal way of seeing things, very few democracies fail while dictatorships fall and leave economic mayhem.
Democracy is quirkily fascinating! I am surprised it works at all
Things are much better now for students under PN administration then under Labour, when medical students chained themselves to Castille, or law students were chased out of the law courts by dockyard workers. I'm not saying Labour will ever return to that, but they have never done anything much for education.
People may argue that they gave us a stipend in the first place, but hey, most other countries don't have one anyway or have student loans. And Sant wasn't exactly student friendly in '96.
By the way, cheers Daniela. Good article.
The Mintoff years have been turbulent ones for a number of reasons, yet one must not ignore other facts eg home ownership increased significantly to exceed the 50% mark, wages saw a significant real increase in value, tourist arrivals increased by over 250%, as the economy grew sufficiently to stem the emigration tide (125, 000 Maltese circa left these islands in between 1946 and 1970 while only 13,000 left their homes in between 1975-1985 as 17,000 returned to our shores. Is it not perhaps time that we start being realistic about our history. In this way you may not be as stupefied at the amount of people who vote labour.
There are many students who support the labour party, indeed their use of the internet to organise their events and activities seems to have improved massively.
Regarding the university debate, i saw many labour supporters in the crowd as well as nationalists, its just the nationalists were a bit more noisy.
Many undecided students were angered by the behaviour of the nationalist supporters and perhaps swayed them towards the labour party.
The truth is that the youth of today are too young to remember what happened in the past and in 1996, and if the PN take for granted the idea that the majority favour them just because a few of them chose to show... it may well be at their pearl.
But then, how do you explain that 141,888 voted for a party which would not guarantee students' stipends? Could not guarantee that we would still be members of the European Union? Could not guarantee that overtime would continue to be paid at time and a half or better? Could not come up with a definite description of a 'reception class'? Could not run a campaign without calling students "hamalli" and Nationalists as having something wrong with their DNA? Could not explain how they planned to finance the reduction of the surcharge by a half?
These 141,888 must not have children, are well enough that they do not care how they are paid for overtime, they do not understand the benefits of being in the EU, they do not care that employment is at an all time high while the unemployed are at the lowest levels in many years?
How does one go about explaining to these people that like it or not, under a Nationalist administration Malta always took impressive strides forward while the opposite is true whenever Labour governed?
Part of the answer weighs heavily on your shoulders and others' like you.
You are the leaders of tomorrow and you should always put your country ahead of personal or party interests.
Well done and keep up the good work.