What is on our minds, wherever we may be and whatever we are doing if not the general election? Everyone is talking of little else. So what is one to make of it all? Next Saturday most of us shall be going to vote and after that the die will be cast for the following five years. One can only hope that people will sift through all they have seen and heard and come to an intelligent conclusion: who is saying the truth, who isn’t? Who is spinning continually and using their solid propaganda machine relentlessly? I have not quite embraced cynicism yet but politics remains as it always has been in every advanced democracy a contest between competing elites with the voters as cannon fodder.
Are we going to allow ourselves to become a one-party state which would be so very unhealthy. Of course there are many who do not think so and who would prefer to keep the status quo. They will get a chance to vote on this, this coming Saturday.
I have watched politicians on the box who have an air of the last chance saloon about them. We have watched others whose credibility because of their sins of commission and even omission has been seriously dented, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. We have been listening to politicians speaking as if what they were saying was gospel truth only to find out, soon after, that we were being seriously misinformed. We are so sorry to see that a few underestimate our intelligence and don’t seem to realise that even those who may not be educated have an inborn intelligence and have learnt to read between the lines and are far from gullible.
The film Bulworth is the story of an American senator who suffers a nervous breakdown and starts speaking the truth to the public. He tells one audience of poor, black voters that promises of help from politicians such as himself and Mr Clinton are always empty – witness half their community’s young people being unemployed and the other half in jail.
Nobody expects real-life politicians to tell the truth even for half of the time, let alone all of it. But we have seen some politicians exceeding the limit in suppressing the facts and expecting us to believe their spin. Pinocchio is having a field day.
Politicians and their spin doctors only speak about those issues which are going to win them votes. So many issues are kept out of debates for fear that too many questions will be asked. As far as I can make out there have been no questions about ministerial outings, official trips round the Commonwealth, flights to here, there and everywhere, meals and wines all at the taxpayers’ expense. Perhaps some of them would get stage fright if they had to answer some detailed questions about their lives. Where is the guardian of the public purse one would like to ask when we hear of certain goings on? Accountability is a word which does not cross the lips of so many politicians. How many of the pamphlets, booklets and brochures distributed – and most are a complete waste of paper – explaining the government’s policies have been paid for from public funds? Sometimes these bits of glossy paper are justified but only rarely and most of them are just an excuse to make the taxpayer foot the bill of propaganda. Kim il-Sung thou shouldst be living at this hour.
Everyone knows that Education is the one important issue which could put a politican on the wrong side of public opinion.
The Labour Party courageously came out and pronounced itself on education with a proposal which will consolidate the educational base of those schoolchildren who, for various reasons – either because of nature, nurture or both, may be weak at school, right from the start. We have to produce an educated workforce not simply a workforce that has been through the educational system. We have to stem the tide of children, a tide as big as a Nuremberg Rally, who are leaving school unprepared for life in several ways. For example no matter how much one may love the Maltese language, we have to make certain that children come out of school with a very good practical knowledge of the English language, which is a world language and for most of us our bread and butter.
Friends of mine have told me, over the years, how so many who work in their homes, as plumbers, electricians, handymen and so on, can barely speak any English at all. They simply do not understand the language. This becomes a problem when one of the partners is a foreigner and does not speak Maltese. This means that both partners have to be present when workmen are carrying out jobs in their home.
When the British forces were here, almost everyone spoke a coherent English. It was necessary especially if you were in private business – a bar, a shop, a grocery. Not so now. This is because, in spite of protestations, so many of our youngsters come out of school with barely an education let alone being able to speak English. It is sometimes embarrassing to answer the questions of visitors when they come across teachers of English to foreigners who should not be teaching at all, whether they have sat for the ‘right’ examinations at all. But that is another matter.
In education quality should be a priority. Moreover, children should enjoy their schooling. It becomes more and more clear that our educational system needs to be redesigned to increase success. What is a few extra months, or even a year in one’s life if you are going to reap the benefits eventually.
I sat for my A Levels when I was 29. Women of my generation were not groomed for tertiary education. My mother thought that learning how to play the piano was the important thing. But I was lucky enough to force myself to reflect and realized that it would be a good idea to further my education. As things turned out after my A Levels at I was awarded a scholarship to a Polytechnic in London to follow a course in Library and Information. I was, in fact, the first woman to be qualified as a librarian in Malta. But that hardly matters though for me it was a milestone. It took me to places outside Malta and opened many horizons for me. Had I not pushed myself to do my A Levels, maybe those horizons would have remained closed. So, what is a year or two or three in our younger days? I heard so much rubbish spoken about this matter, not only by partisan politicians but also by parents who seem to want their children to rush through school, cramming as much ‘education’ as possible and to ‘qualify’ as fast as they can. How sad this is.
When one of my girls failed a practical exam of her course at the University of Malta, during her first year, I simply encouraged her to repeat it. At first there was a certain reluctance to do this on her part but she finally agreed and at the end of the year told me how much more she had enjoyed that year as she now had a better grasp of the subjects and was more confident and so on. So, what is a year in one’s life, especially if it is going to consolidate their knowledge, give the weaker children a bigger chance of success and more confidence?
The results of the general election are going to depend on the floating voter and the small parties, I keep on hearing, time and again. I am sure this is true but I have no idea how to work out these things though there are many who do. Then there are the endless opinion polls. I am invited to give my preferences on email. I don’t bother filling them in and I am sure there are many who don’t, just like me, for lack of time mostly. But anyway, it is never easy to transmute opinion poll support into ballot box support. These opinion polls are merely indicative and one cannot take them too seriously. And it is more than probable that the parties themselves manipulate them for whatever reason. The silent majority, the floating voter exists but sometimes it is better at remaining silent than at becoming a majority. We shall only know what the floating voter has decided after the general election. Everyone is already tired of this whole business. Most, are a spent force trying to keep up with everything that is happening. How much simpler those corner meetings of yore were. A friend told me that a one-party state offers MPs the prospect of lengthy employment in the highest office for a very long time. And that there are prizes for those who can stay on, on the ladder. ‘Do we want this?’ she said. I said nothing. And so the train of events will clatter on into the night, until next Saturday. I’ve put a bottle of bubbly into the frig. Too early a friend said. Anyway, I’m saying this pour encourager les autres. It will be good to have a glass of bubbly and empty my mind, no matter the outcome.