It is almost a daily struggle for me to stay positive about the political and economic direction of this country. However, there is always one group of Maltese who never ceases to give me renewed hope for this country – our young people with their energy, ingenuity and enthusiasm. It was only last week that I had the opportunity of visiting the “Young Enterprise” stands at City Gate. The odd hour I spent there (politically incognito) was time enjoyed and well spent. Inadvertently, it also served as a political eye opener. Many of the products and services on offer by these “temporary” companies, which were established to give some of our youth a taste of entrepreneurial life, were truly interesting and innovative. They covered ideas from waste management processes to innovative gift novelties to interactive culture and education based ICT products.

What was even more interesting than the items on offer was the opportunity to converse with a number of these prospective entrepreneurs. The one thing that really struck me is that, unlike a majority of those business people of previous generations, these young entrepreneurs do not assume that the route to fame and fortune is intrinsically tied with real estate. They have grown up in a world in which knowledge not hardware is the route to wealth generation. One of them openly declared that property development is “boring”. I cannot but agree. Development is only about empire building and making money. There is too little in property development about achieving a vision of delivering new products and services to people through innovation, hard work and sometimes, play.

Another interesting aspect of the Young Enterprise project, which I was not aware of, is that a good number of participants are not students of the traditional “business” subjects like accounting and economics. Although they are studying many different disciplines, they have the same goals – to learn life-long skills of organisation and planning and to have lots of fun working hard with others on a project. Three thoughts came to mind from this short encounter. The first is that, due to their intellectual flexibility and openness, it is more than likely that the next generation of Maltese entrepreneurs will be more dynamic and hence more successful than their predecessors. The second thought (more of a problem actually) is about what this country should be doing to keep such talent here, or what we should do to attract such young talent back to Malta since a good number will most certainly seek their first fortune overseas. The third thought is that it is an utter shame that the million liri in venture capital promised by this government two budgets ago has not yet been invested. Tonio Fenech wake up!

While I am convinced that Malta’s young entrepreneurs will outdo their predecessors, I am very sceptical about the ability of Malta’s young politicians to outdo theirs. It seems obvious to me, at least from what I hear on the media, that many local “young” politicians are not able to think ahead. Theirs remains the politics of pique and not the politics of proposal. They are caught, in many ways to a greater degree than their seniors, in the shameless spectacle of bi-partisan mud slinging and mutually destructive bitching. One such example happened this week in a TV debate on Smash TV. The invitees were the young Joseph Cuschieri (MLP) and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (PN), as well as the no-longer-young Harry Vassallo. When the latter made a comment about the way he believes the Green Party is being denied access to visual broadcast media, not unlike the manner (albeit not with the same intensity) that the Nationalists were treated by Labour in the eighties, the successive arguments put forward by the other invitees were simply pathetic. Dr Pullicino Orlando ignored Harry Vassallo and made it a point to remind everyone how brutally his party was treated in the eighties – a point that had just been made by the Green party leader. Mr Cuschieri replied by expressing his disagreement with how the Labour Party’s treated the Nationalists in the eighties. However he could not help reminding his audience of the bad treatment of Laburisti in the sixties. Pullicino Orlando, attempting to interrupt Cuschieri, told him, “You don’t want me to tell you what you did to us in the fifties, do you? I couldn’t believe my ears. For God’s sake, Joseph Cuschieri wasn’t even alive in the sixties and Dr Pullicino Orlando wasn’t around in the fifties! Rather than talk about their respective ideas to expand the democratic process in public broadcasting in the 21st century, they were arguing about what happened before their own time. I mean really, who gives a…? If this is what our “young” politicians are offering, it is likely (and really sad) that many of us may feel nostalgic for the politicians of the past. While our young entrepreneurs promise to outdo their predecessors, our young politicians cannot even match theirs.

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There was one public statement made last week I must comment on. In a public meeting discussing the fruits of EU membership after two years, MEP Simon Busuttil asked his audience, “Who was the party that worked for Malta to enter the European Union?” Surely, Dr Busuttil, you meant to say “who were the parties?”

Edward P. Fenech is spokesperson on finance, the economy and tourism of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party