With a national election some 16 months away, it won’t be long before we receive in our homes lists of candidates of all parties, prior to the long and winding road to difficult victory.
Having chosen one’s party (or parties), one proceeds to choose the candidates who will make the best politicians. A good politician is not necessarily a person between 40 and 50. A simple search (unless one’s head is in the sand or concrete) will produce the names of politicians who delivered well while under 30 or over 70 years of age. For politics is not about age but delivery.
A good politician is not one who speaks or writes well in Maltese, English, Urdu or Estonian but, simply put, a practical altruist. So, faced with a difficult choice when you receive your electoral list, render your choice easier by eliminating those who do not take an interest in you and your area, those to whom you write and they ignore you, those who are cold towards your group and your locality.
You may wish to put a note near the names of those you will definitely not vote for, for example: N/A; AI (As If); KD (Keep Dreaming); MH (Mhux Hekk! – of course!]; IBS (Int Bis-Serjetà? – are you serious?); ULSV (Una Lacrima Sul Viso – a tear of joy!); PTOO (Pull The Other One); HB (Hekk Bqajna – definitely!); DBM (Don’t Bother Me); YCEAML (You can’t expect all my loving) etc.
With today’s voters becoming less interested in fanatical politics, more approachable, communicative, politicians will be elected. A new Maltese Parliament may have flowers growing and – especially – politicians who care and do, not those who listen and don’t.
Politicians and diplomats
When a politician talks to a foreign diplomat it’s not like when a parent tells another: “My children will not eat vegetables. Oh! How they worry me!” This is harmless chat without any particular consequence.
Diplomats in any country are not there to go out of their way to please and accommodate the hosting country. Their mission includes being kind, courteous, sweet observers, extracting maximum information and fausses confidences about the local situation, the guys and the dolls.
They usually excel in warm welcomes, as a kind of preconditioning to help the politician be generous in the exposition of internal party or national info while whispering: “Listen, do you want to know a secret?” And the perfidious diplomat gets his/her intimate titbits over a hug or two. The politician will then go away saying to his missus: “Oh, darling! Ain’t she sweet!”while the diplomat transmits the collected info back home. It will then be too late and sobs of “I should have known better” will not remedy the situation.
Some will say that this may be a kind of conspiracy theory but only if they are not aware of how many times it has happened and eventually became known through media interviews with retired diplomats, politicians… and Wikileaks.
I believe that Maltese diplomats abroad rarely come across foreign politicians who are prepared to chatter away about internal political problems – whether they belong to party or nation.
A coach will not blabber with a member of another team about what worries him in his own team because the listener will be rubbing his hands at this naïveté and immediately tell his committee what he has just heard.
I believe that politicians must talk with diplomats for the sake of international friendship and business but without forgetting that the listener is also an excellent fisherman (or fisherlady) eager to make a good info catch.
Ministerial assessment
Judging by former American Ambassador Molly Bordonaro’s poor attempt at ministerial assessment in Maltese politics, I confirmed that an ambassador is not necessarily in an ideal position to measure the competence of foreign politicians. Ms Bordonaro BA, an expert in real estate, judges Tonio Borg, Foreign Affairs Minister, by his “fondness” of the US without mentioning any of his academic, political and administrative qualities. Ministries, of course, cannot be assessed the same way as real estate.
A politician is usually offended if his professional competence is judged on the basis of his fondness of a country. Also, speaking with Dr Borg, one realises that he has a fondness of several countries and cultures, including those where a stern terminator becomes governor while a bold cowboy rides serenely into the sunset and emerges as President.
Perhaps, before giving too much importance to Ms Bordonaro’s simplistic opinions, it would be better to judge a politician on his/her complete curriculum vitae instead of a feeling that “He loves us, yeah, yeah, yeah!” since you can’t do that no matter how much you feel glad all over.