Or shall I say ‘ordinary people’, by which I mean to refer to those who try to live a decent life without asking or expecting privileges, but only what is legally and factually their right in a morally correct, just and honourable way.
In an e-book published by two journaists to coincide with the US presidential inauguration – titled How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution – authors Joel B. Pollack and Larry Schweibart from the New York Times arrived to the conclusion that: “Donald Trump won his party’s nomination and the general election itself because he, alone among Republican candidates, spoke directly to the American people.”
Whether you love or hate Trump, it is now emerging as an established fact, that his unpredicted and highly improbable election was attributable to his direct appeal to all Americans “in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean”.
Shall we say that winning the election was the ‘relatively easy’ part of the job for Trump? As always, the real test of translating words into action will come in the months and years ahead.
Commenting on Trump’s election, the London Sunday Times in a recent editorial quoted President Lyndon Johnson who once said that “a president’s hardest task is not to do what is right but to know what is right. In the coming months we shall find out if Mr. Trump knows what is right”.
In its 170-page electoral manifesto the Labour Party presented a one-time opportunity to get rid of the country’s main malaises
Let’s transpose this to our reality here in Malta. To me it seems that prior to the last general election in 2013, the Labour Party gave the impression that it knew what is right. In its 170-page electoral manifesto Labour presented a one-time opportunity to get rid of the country’s main malaises which it succinctly classified as being corruption, lack of transparency, accountability, meritocracy, and politicians’ greed.
They promised a fair and just society, an aspiration for all those who wanted to continue going forward and also “that you can disagree with us but you can work with us”.
I have been a confirmed Nationalist Party candidate for the coming general election for only four months, and it follows that I’m still climbing the learning curve. However, during this intervening period, I had the opportunity to meet hundreds of families in their homes as I happen to believe ardently in this method of contact, and, by so doing I learn first-hand what are the real needs and aspirations of the people I will try to represent if they give me their confidence.
There, right in the thick of it, one can hear viva voce genuine and honest appreciations of the various issues they have to face, many of which are forced on them through man-driven circumstances or others, more serious – particularly those health-related – which fall on them unannounced and which add a further burden on the whole family.
Nearly everyday I meet people who are passing through difficult times, but I’m impressed by the resilience of most of them, and I’m learning evermore how much our people are ready to bear sacrifices to somehow make both ends meet. Don’t ever be impressed too much with the idea that all our families belong to the affluent portion of our society.
On the other hand, I am very much aware that the general standard of living of our population made great strides in the last 25 years but, unfortunately, notwithstanding formal promises across our political spectrum that no one will be ‘left behind’, you meet, on the ground, much more cases than you would expect of whole families passing through particularly difficult times.
It is against this background that I want to register a widespread lament I have been witnessing during my frequent home visits in different localities, and among families from contrasting categories and from all walks of life.
They put forward, without any promptings or solicitations, the odd situation of having the establishment boasting of a booming economy and in the meantime they cannot see it or feel it trickle down to reach them. It is a comment which has nothing to do with political affiliations; as a matter of fact I have been overwhelmed with instances where I meet people who spontaneously reveal to me that in the 2013 general election they voted Labour, because they genuinely thought that time was up for the PN administration and that Malta badly needed to change.
Now they are realising – and saying too – that the change we are effectively witnessing is not what they had expected and voted for.
Most of these people pinpoint the excesses of this Labour administration and that the minute that government took control of the country, they forgot what they had promised. Promises, they say, evaporated into thin air and that ‘transparency’ is now meaning absolute secrecy, ‘accountability’ means closed doors on information, and ‘meritocracy’ has been reduced to mean favours to friends and cronies only.
To add insult to injury, we continue to witness government excesses wherever you care to focus your attention – like when, the other day, we got to know that a minister spent €13,400 to go with a private secretary to speak at a forum in China, and the day after, we read in this paper that the elderly in the government’s Mosta home, had for weeks been using plastic forks because the dishwasher broke and had not been replaced.
These, and much more, are what I hear in my home visits. These are the things which really matter to the ‘ordinary people’, and with whom a revamped Nationalist Party is trying to engage with.
As a parting shot I take liberty to quote from an excellent article by Philip Rizzo in The Sunday Times of Malta (January 15) which needs no further comment.
“God forbid that the present ‘acutely number-aware’ New Labour continues to act as though it believes that nepotism (if not also, vile corruption) causes only partial opaqueness, but not a state of mental uncertainty, which a relevant number of us had hoped would be behind by now.”
Jean Pierre Debono is PN assistant secretary general and candidate on the seventh electoral district.