If I were the leader of the Neo Labour Movement, I would either be very happy or extremely worried, depending on where my loyalties lay: with my personal gain or the country’s welfare.

Some will claim that the same could be said of the other side, but I would rebut that the results of our elections, especially the last one, tend to contradict that.

It is whispered, but not openly said (I suppose because of political correctness and not wanting to scare off potential converts), that one could expect an average Nationalist not to vote or even to vote Labour, but hardly vice-versa. I ascribe this to the basic make-up of the parties. As I have already stated, I consider the Labour Party more of a cult or a church than a political association, like so many other monolithic groupings of the extreme left and right.

This is not a scientific paper on the subject – though I would like to instigate one – but my own conclusion over a lifetime of observation. There will be those who scream “Prejudice! Prejudice!” Fair enough, but that ‘prejudice’ did not prevent me from voting for the Neo Labourite messiah and his promise of a ‘Brave New World’, did it?

Prejudice could be concieved of as another tool provided by Mother Nature for our survival in a hostile world, where prudence is not enough. But one must learn how to wield it properly, otherwise it could easily turn into a weapon of doom instead of an instrument of life, just like the proverbial knife.

When I looked up the word prejudice I found the following definition: To judge someone or something according to a previous experience, considered related to the subject. A bias. It comes from the Latin praejudicium, and it actually means to pass judgement without trial.

How many people would subscribe to that mentality today? Certainly very few would admit to it, but in actual fact it is still very widespread and even sanctioned, encouraged and advised by parents, secular leaders and religious dogma.

It was sad and worrying to learn a while back that an Afro-American engineer had to leave Malta because he discovered it was, according to him, the most racist country he had ever lived in. Just as worrying is to see youngsters, fresh out of a dysfunctional educational system, brandishing T-shirts with “Laburist sal-mewt” (Labourite for life) inscribed all over their proud young chests.

Can we possibly rejoice in this? Do we really take pride in such senseless prejudices? It would appear that we do, as statements like “I come from a Nationalist/Labourite family and can never vote for the other party” are commonplace, widely accepted and seem to confirm our biased thinking, which a priori bars any possible change of heart.

Without even realising it, we in Malta have been trained for millennia to take pride and find comfort in prejudice. Perhaps it is because we were a frontier island fortress between two major religions constantly at war. Whatever it is, it’s a national trait that sufaces with a vengence in times of crisis or great excitement, like the arrival of uninvited foreigners or the coming of a general election.

It has become impossible to understand the concept that a public- spirited citizen should, first and foremost, serve his country and his conscience, not some leader or policy

It is a primitive tribal mentality that has fuelled ugly village festa rivalries and has now become a burden of shame around the neck of a Church that has lagged behind for too long in the baroque men­tality of the counter-reformation.

The very same pride in prejudice has been inherited and adopted by the political parties, and this has split Malta in two, seemingly for evermore.

Our pride in prejudice, coupled with our self-imposed pride in ignorance, has led to an intellectual arthritis that has jammed our capacity for critical reasoning and stunted our intellectual growth. Just follow any vox pop or opinion programme on television like Xarabank, where the audience has a say, to understand how deeply rooted and difficult to eradicate is this national abberration.

I’ve experienced in person the rule of a well-tutored ignorant mob, especially when politics was the subject, proudly screaming senseless abuse moulded by their ingrained and cultivated prejudices, as their supposed­ly intelligent representatives felt rightly embarrassed and humiliated by their own creation. Just like a post-Ecumenical Council Catholic Church, now shamed and unable to control the once encouraged residues of baroque merrymaking during the pagan festivities for local patron saints.

We have grown into a nation of nouveau riche egocentrics, solidly encrusted in the old prejudices of past servitude, unable to see beyond the sense of inferiority and insecurity of a subservient nation, a nation that even considered giving up sovereignty for integration with a foreign nation as a solution to its future welfare problems.

We are a nation of misguided intellectual toddlers mistaking prejudice for patriotism, politics and beliefs.

We are a tribe weakened by Machiavellian ‘divide and rule’ jugglers, lured by the glittering promises of a crafty elite, resigned to an immutable two-party system based on the monolithic structure of a strong leadership riddled by clientelism and feudal patronage. A tribe that finds it hard to open up to new ideas and is fatalistically resigned to a stagnant status quo.

Even those I considered as open-minded intellectuals found it hard to understand my personal political stance, because it is different from what we are used to: “One leader, one party and one nation”, to quote Adolf Hitler. It has become impossible to understand the concept that a public-spirited citizen should, first and foremost, serve his country and his conscience, not some leader or policy, which, as history has taught us, can easily be corrupted and taken over by propaganda.

In a country where one speaks openly against the party in government, old pre­judices instantly label him as an un­ques­tioning, staunch supporter of the party in opposition. It has become impossible to accept the idea that a citizen can subscribe to a party so long as its members in Parlia­ment are loyal to their solemn oath of office.

I’ve been called a fool and a dreamer and made enemies of those who should be friends. Because unfortunately, our pride in prejudice make us forget we are first and foremost Maltese citizens, who should be working as one community, for the good of our little budding nation.

I suppose that the problem lies squarely with a colonial education system that has always promoted material gain, if not exclusively, then certainly ahead of the importance of forming right-thinking, creative citizens. Art and history are considered a waste of time for those who want to succeed in life, and are relegated to extracurricular activities.

Instead of taking advantage of the small size of our population and fashioning a creative system that could be a beacon to other nations, successive administrations have always cut corners and ‘embellished’ the old Victorian grammer school model the British left behind. In art, this would definitely be considered as ‘decadent’ and certainly a dead end.

It is about time culture and education cease to be subservient to the economy and instead become the principal supporting columns of this nation.

These two institutions working together could, instead of being a production line of proficient ‘workers’ meant to fit in to an imposed economy, flourish into an inspired, holistic programme, producing thinking citizens who could overcome the heavy, rusty chains of stifling prejudices which asphixiate the mind and corrode a whole nation.

Salvu Mallia is an election candidate for the Nationalist Party.