That an election is being held to choose a new Labour leader gives the right signal – so I believe. The ongoing process demonstrates that there is an active interest to fill this position despite the shadows that had gathered around it in past weeks. It provides an opportunity for party members to consider proposals for future action, so that instead of just voting for a person, they also can choose between action programmes.
Clearly, during an electoral contest trouble could arise, as well as antagonism and bad blood between people who from being friends turn into adversaries. Still, if certain basic rules of conduct are respected, such outcomes would in no way be inevitable.
It is also crucial that as a matter of course, full room remains for whoever is not chosen where he/she can continue to give witness to his/her political commitment. Some believe that this would be hard to arrange between two people who have just been in competition with each other.
I am not so convinced. We know instances where this happened quite successfully. It is obvious that good faith and trust would need to prevail. That these happen to be very superior qualities for one to have, need not mean that they are in scarce supply.
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TRUST
After all, just because Sophia In’tVelde said it, does not signify that what she said hardly makes sense. She led the LIBE delegation from the European Parliament which visited Malta a week ago. According to her, a main problem in the island has become a loss of trust in how government decisions are taken.
When one no longer believes that those in power are telling the truth, or that they are being genuine and honest in what they say and do, a crisis of governance will follow. It might be or might not be the fault of whoever is in power. But if such a lack of trust has occurred, then it is vital to correct for it.
This country’s governance today is indeed facing the challenge of how to restore the trust it has lost.
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THE SAME AS...
In past years, I often heard it, not least about construction projects. “I am not asking for special treatment. I just want to be given the same treatment as anybody else. I do not want to get more than what X has gotten, but I should be treated exactly the same way that X has, otherwise there’s no justice.”
And you can only agree that’s the case – what has been allowed to one, should also apply equally to another.
The problem though is this: it seems to have become common practice for first X to bend the rules and then to find some procedure by which to sanitize what he has done. Later, other cases will come up in which the model applied for X is taken on board, so that what got allowed for X, must also be allowed elsewhere for somebody else, Z.
How X has been dealt with becomes the correct, “just” procedure. And to give less to others, would be an injustice. I know a case where after having been allowed his claim, based on what X had “received”, Z joined the appeals that were being made against the original decision which had favoured X!
Indeed, only in Malta!