Recent well-publicised events, but also contacts with various sections and understanding what is going on at ground level have all led me to worry that not enough care is being given to the grooming of future politicians.

One can here distinguish between the two main political parties and indeed it is only fair that this is done, but equally perhaps some general considerations apply to all.

It is the party in government, the Nationalist Party, which has fallen victim to the unpreparedness of its cadres. This is because it is the party in government. Equally, we have had multiple cases of people who did not turn out to be the people the party thought they were.

We have had many local councillors who had to resign, or were made to resign. We have had MPs who are manifestly not happy with their present situation and who have, this past legislature, become rather frisky and unstable. We have even had cases where these malcontents sided with or even joined the Opposition.

The party now finds itself in the unhappy position of regretting ever asking this or that person to contest in its name. What will happen between now and the coming election is anybody’s guess. Some have clearly hinted they will not be contesting again, others seem to be daring the party to do something about them and we have been getting quite strong hints that the party ‘would not dare’ unseat a sitting MP.

One would have thought that with the creation of local councils, being a councillor at a local level was the right way to introduce a young person to partisan politics. In fact, there is quite a cohort of MPs on either side, and even ministers and parliamentary secretaries, who cut their teeth as local councillors.

It is now clear, however, that just by inviting someone to be a candidate and then seeing that candidate making it through the polls can also be seen as a rather skimpy introduction to politics and maybe even not the right introduction at all. Power, as they say, corrupts, even the limited power of a councillor. While the introduction of local councils has been generally beneficial, it has also contributed its fair share of local tin pot dictators and people whose success has gone to their heads.

At a minimum, local councillors must be monitored and handled very carefully, especially if it is their first experience in politics. The economic rules governing local government are quite draconian and an introduction to the wider rules of government, and it is only around now that they are being observed. There has been quite a steep learning process for all and we are all the better for it as a result.

Recent experience has also taught that it is one thing to be a local councillor, or even a mayor, and quite another thing to be an MP. Many still seem to think that one is the natural progression of the other, but there is a very real qualitative difference between one and the other.

This is where I feel the parties, generally speaking, have not been giving all they should be giving for the formation of real politicians of the future. The three parties are now part of the main European political groupings, each with power in the European Parliament (and also with quite substantial funds to foster training as well as opportunities for young people out of university to do stints as stagiares and to get valuable experience at international level. If one looks, for instance, at today’s Cabinet line-up, there are no ministers who had this kind of exposure. And it shows: our present Cabinet is long on local experience at local council level but short, too short, on international exposure. One can only speculate what image they present whenever they are sent abroad (let alone what image they will present once Malta has the EU Presidency).

There is still more to be said. At least the Labour Party has sent some of its leading youngsters to the various academies sponsored by the PES, but the Nationalist Party, which probably has more opportunities, does not seem to have done so.

It would also seem that the people who benefited from many opportunities to study at some of the more signal European academies in the end did so to further their own career advancement, and any advantage that the country and/or their parties could derive from all that learning and exposure to European reality goes down the drain.

One might think that today there are enough opportunities for young people to do post-graduate studies anywhere in the world and especially in Europe, but in reality, as the government’s generic scheme for post-graduate study shows, many young people seem to need that extra push and encouragement to seek proper opportunities for further study abroad. The parties must understand they are in competition for the best brains along with institutes of higher learning as well as private industry. That is all the more reason why they must redouble their efforts instead of giving up and taking on whoever comes along.

The parties must also beware of those who seek to climb up on the strength of the local kazin or committee and who have not made an effort to broaden their outlook by means of further study. And they must be even more aware of the perils posed by those who frequent Dar Ċentrali or party headquarters for this environment makes for in-people who are out of touch with the reality that people live day after day.

The same, perhaps even more, can be said of those who seek to climb by way of the television stations the parties have endowed themselves with. These stations are proving to be a huge burden for the two parties with the money they absorb and which maybe detracts from other more worthwhile uses of the parties’ funds. Each time an election comes round, the stations become the launch pad of would-be politicians who learn to seek ratings above anything else and who, rather than learning collaboration and teamwork seek only and uniquely the glorification of the proper persona.

The parties must understand, today more than ever, the need of preventive screening of any and all candidates, even for the most lowly of councillor posts. Candidates must be screened psychologically but also their finances, their lifestyles, their friends must be scrutinized. Lacking this has led the parties to many sorry stories.

This does not mean that the candidates must be scrutinized to ensure they conform to one ideological or confessional template – otherwise the parties will become churches and pluralism can be forgotten for the next two centuries. But there is a limit as to how much can be allowed under the aegis of a political party and if there’s a lesson to be learnt from the current problems it is that all the so-called tolerance and pluralism, if not properly handled, ends in tears.

My main message today is for the parties to do more, much more, to encourage young people to become interested in politics and to provide them with good sustainable opportunities to broaden their outlook and to become professional in the way they look at political activity. The time when the local avukat or nutar contested to be a candidate is now over. We need more politicians in touch with the social sciences, with economics, with the reality of present-day Europe so that our people, maybe years down the line, may benefit.

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