I have seen quite a few observations and policy proposals on the media with respect to Ażad Foundation, which I have led over the past four years. Most of them are unfortunately woefully uninformed and some are even insulting to those people who selflessly put in so much hard voluntary work over these four years. Some observations were also judgemental, a very Christian speciality in this country. I guess pompous self-importance is in vogue these days.
In honour of those tireless and dedicated people who worked so hard for Ażad (Academy for the Development of a Democratic Environment) and who I salute, I have a duty to set the record straight.
When I was asked to take over the presidency of Ażad in October 2013, I inherited what can best be described as an ailing foundation, mired in a lot of debt, with no resources, no funding and no staff or even volunteers. Absolutely nothing.
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To make matters worse, it was also a period of general and massive apathy to anything political and, even more so, to anything PN. People were literally intolerant and even aggressive towards anything or anyone somehow linked to the PN and no one was interested to engage in any manner or form. This state of play effectively persisted till mid 2015.
We first had to restructure debts, pay up and tackle many annoying legacy issues, some of which linger to this day. Keeping in mind the total lack of funding, resources and staff, this process was not a walk in the park. The message from the PN was clear: deal with it and we cannot allocate even one cent. We dealt with it and we did not ask for or got one cent from the PN.
Faced with massive apathy towards politics in general, at least till the encouraging 2015 local council elections, rather than flog a dead horse we decided to use our time making headway in the culture and arts sector, which had decisively turned against the PN in 2013.
In these four years, we organised and hosted a truly impressive amount of high- level exhibitions, festivals, theatre productions, dance performances, photography events, concerts (both classical and modern), poetry, creativity sessions and many more.
We actively engaged with the arts and culture community and we established our premises as a destination for such events. We urged the party to get MPs, activists etc. to attend these events as they were an excellent opportunity to meet people in a relaxed environment.
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We sought to act as a bridge for the PN with those who perhaps were not comfortable with it or did not want to be close to the PN itself. Unfortunately, our recommendation often fell on deaf ears, even though these events were all successes in their own right, totally on a voluntary basis and with zero funding or staff.
On the ‘political’ front, despite the massive challenges we faced, we also organised and hosted a number of interesting activities such as a media event, beautiful memorial evenings in honour of the likes of Giorgio Borg Olivier and Guido de Marco, superb book launches by people like Renè Rossignaud, Giovanni Bonello and Richard Muscat, and special evenings in collaboration with the Austrian and US embassies. We also held a series of highly-interesting and well-attended events called Ażad academia (seven to date) in which scholars discuss a part of their Ph.D studies on highly topical subjects and this is then debated openly by the attendees.
Some of the observations, insults and policy proposals on Ażad by some of the leadership contenders are nothing but a huge insult
Despite a very challenging environment we also organised an 11-session training course for mainly local council electoral candidates. This was very well received and was a big success, with 90 per cent of those attending actually being elected.
We also launched training modules for general election candidates, hosting two of them before the election was unexpectedly called but the response from candidates was very disappointing. We actively studied the possibility of launching training modules in other areas but the huge competition in place, the availability of online courses and the parking problem in Valletta made this initiative unfeasible.
On the policymaking and think-tank side of things, we fought hard to stop the PN from making the wrong decision to set up policy fora within the party. It was a total failure and a strategic error and we said so from the word go. Furthermore, it handicapped Ażad in its traditional policymaking/think-tank role.
Despite offering to help the moribund PN policy fora we were rather unceremoniously turned down. Why remains a mystery, although egos may have a lot to do with it.
It goes without saying that, for an Ażad burdened with debt, no funding and no staff, it was not feasible or sensible to duplicate the work that was meant to be executed by the PN policy fora.
Having said that, and despite having Ażad’s role as policymaker and think-tank ostracised by the ill-fated PN policy fora initiative, we still contributed a lot of policy and other initiatives to the PN, probably far more than Ażad had done for a long time, if truth be told. These were not publicised because we believed that our role was not to boast but, rather, to provide options for the PN, leaving it to the party to use our work or otherwise.
Unfortunately and inexplicably, these extremely-creative and well thought through proposals were not used properly and, often, not at all, which was and is a great pity. It beggars belief. It seems the great strategists at Pietà knew better.
These policy initiatives and other proposals spanned the whole four years, right up to the electoral campaign itself. They included detailed policy proposals/documents on ODZ; arts and culture; new industries; transportation and regeneration; intelligent use of our roofs; the housewife; tackling the growing sense of inequality between the State and its people; innovative tax proposals; incentives for private healthcare; incentives for youths furthering their studies; a detailed grassroots contact system and others.
We spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on these policy initiatives and other proposals, giving our own time and often till the wee hours of the night. We contributed all that voluntarily, with no funding, no staff and mired in debt, so the judgemental, uninformed and, quite frankly, immature tone of some of the observations, invective and policy proposals on Ażad by some of the leadership contenders are nothing but a huge insult to the genuine, selfless people who gave their heart and soul to achieve what we achieved against all odds.
Yes, we did not get any publicity for it and we did not seek it but half-decent people would enquire with the source before posting such invective and misinformation.
In the two months leading to the sudden election, as many will be aware, we also had a very strong campaign on The Sunday Times of Malta, timesofmalta.com and Facebook, plus a host of articles and social media posts.
We did all that in four short years and I openly challenge anyone to come anywhere close to that volume and variety of work, without funding, with no staff and exclusively on a voluntary basis.
We simply could not have done more while others bided their time doing absolutely nothing. Convenient, is it not?
What, I humbly ask, would it have taken for those who were somehow interested to pick up the phone and convene a quick meeting to get up to speed with what actually happened instead of arrogantly publishing a bunch of insulting proposals and clichés, giving some the impression that we have been sitting pretty for the fun of it.
I won’t enter into how it was even possible to achieve so much in such a short time with no funding, no staff, purely on a voluntary basis and with Ażad in debt. Just figure it out for yourselves.
David Griscti is president of Ażad Foundation.