“All politicians are of the people, but I will remain among the people,” says Camilla Appelgren, making her pitch to a question about what makes her different from other politicians contesting the European Parliament elections this May.
“That’s how you can be a leader, when you fight with the people – it’s who I am as a person, who I will be as a politician.”
There’s much else that is different about the 34-year-old Swede who is standing for the Democratic Party. She points out that her relocation to Malta eight years ago “was very natural” and that Malta is a place “where I felt at home as much as I felt at home in Sweden”.
Her private and public personas are different in other ways too, so is her style of campaigning. She will not be posting out flyers, nor doing any home visits. “My campaign will be what I am,” she says pointedly. “I will do what I have been doing all along: organising clean-ups and being out there.”
Ms Appelgren first came to Malta in 1999 to study English, and she became enamoured of the island and her host family – “an amazing family who became like a second family”. Afterwards she took to visiting Malta every summer for several weeks.
“In a way I see myself as having grown up in Malta,” she elaborates. “Then in Sweden I felt a bit stuck in the routines, and in dark winters, so I decided to take the leap and move to Malta before my children started school.
“At the time I had a dream of being a diving instructor because I love the sea,” she recounts. “So I took a trainee course and became an instructor, but that job only lasted for half a year because as a single parent I had to generate the salary of two persons, and that was not possible from diving.”
She got into a corporate job – as a money-laundering reporting officer with a gaming company – and now she lives in a flat in Rabat with her two children, a girl of 11 and a boy of 13, as well as their Airedale terrier, a Yorkshire breed of terrier that’s uncommon in Malta.
Ms Appelgren has become known for her regular cleanups around the Maltese Islands, something that she started in 2014. She coordinates the activities through a Facebook group – called Malta Clean Up – that boasts 7,300 members. She mounts a cleanup at least every month, which attracts between 10 and 70 participants, and she organises an annual national multi-site cleanup held in collaboration with local councils in which participants number between 1,000 to 2,000 people.
Abortion is a question for the Maltese people, not for the EU to impose on Malta
“During the cleanups we educate people at the sites,” Ms Appelgren says. “We report anything illegal we see – the group is not just about cleanup – this is more a holistic effort that I am leading.”
Her estimation is that the amount of litter around the country remains as prevalent as it was when she started out in 2014. “But the population has increased. And taking into account the increase in population, the litter per capita has decreased. That means things are getting better, and we need to keep on doing what we are doing.”
She will maintain the momentum in her political campaign: maintain the tempo of cleanups, getting out there with her children and dog and mingling with people, delivering talks to companies on invitation about the environment and the green movement.
“I shall trust the people,” she said. “I trust my followers to spread the message.”
At the same time, despite the non-politician imagery, in the few weeks since she has announced her candidacy Ms Appelgren has grown into the role. Her Facebook comments have become more measured and she has started to communicate to the media in rhetorical flourishes. She is setting herself up for success.
Yet her foreignness and womanhood has made her more susceptible to controversies. For example, an erstwhile comment on abortion has been dug out and made the rounds on social media last week, forcing her to spend a week reiterating that the personal choice she made – when she got pregnant at a relatively young age, and had her son – “should explain my personal view.”
Asked to elaborate, she says that her MEP platform is solely on the environment in a holistic manner, and abortion is an issue that is beyond the bounds of her MEP candidacy.
“I raised two children as a single mother, so my personal choice was clearly for motherhood,” she says, adding that in any case she believes that abortion is “a question for the Maltese people, not for the EU to impose it on Malta”.
She has also been criticised for not speaking Maltese, impertinent criticism when considering that she is bidding for the European Parliament in Brussels, where Maltese proficiency would hold no advantage.
“My children go to State schools,” she points out, “and I have been helping them with their Maltese homework. I know the basics, and can follow discussions in Maltese, but my time constraints as a single parent have not enabled me to pick up the language faster. I am now going to be making a bigger effort to learn the language quicker. It’s a beautiful language. But at the same time I have to prioritise: I would rather dedicate more of my time to the Maltese environment.”
As an MEP candidate, her main political plank is “the environment, and what’s connected to it – infrastructure, public health, and transport – all areas where Malta is having some challenges at the moment.”
Ms Appelgren likes cycling and walking in her free time. She has a car, but she takes the bus to work. “It makes me part of the solution,” she says about taking the bus. “I also get the time to read, think and work [on the bus].”
Part of her pitch is that fresh blood is needed in politics in Malta, and parties like the PD – “a party made up of liberals and democrats” – are essential to break the mould of the two large parties.
She sees her role as “attempting to bring about change faster through politics. At the moment, in Malta we always seem to be playing catch-up with sustainability targets set by the EU. I would like to see Malta perform above EU targets and standards. It is possible as a small country. I think we should set the pace, and I am interested in empowerment of Malta for greater achievements.”