Last Monday Partit Nazzjonalista announced that the clusters project, the brainchild of my fellow MP Claudio Grech, is beginning to bear fruit. In a media presentation with the magnificent and iconic view of Valletta’s Marsamxett harbour as a background, Dr Bernard Grech put forward a taste of things to come.
In the coming days and weeks, Partit Nazzjonalista will be revealing details of a holistic vision for our country mainly based on the common good. A vision in the interest of a wide spectrum of the population and for the benefit of all.
My role in this project is two-fold. I head one of the main three horizontal themes on which all political proposals will be built, values, and I form part of the cluster which is focusing on the theme of social well-being.
Values
Many attribute values to a religious doctrine; this is not the case. In a modern society, human values remain fundamental. They are the true soul of the work of a political party and what it truly stands for. Values define us for what we stand for.
When working towards a strong economy for instance, politicians must keep in mind important values like equity, diversity and solidarity. When these values are lacking, our economy will work for the few. The gap between the haves and the have-nots will continue to widen.
A close look at the different political realities of the Neoliberal movements in Latin America reveals the challenges of the economies of this fragile area. In their study, “The Political Economy of Inequality in Chile and Mexico: Two Tales of Neoliberalism,” Giorgos Gouzoulis and Collin Constantine highlight the weaknesses of the Neoliberal economic policies. They claim that “extensive financialization does lead to higher income inequality in developing economies like Chile.” Financialization is when governments push policies which increase in size and importance of a country's financial sector when compared to the relative overall economy of the same country.
A just and fair economy built on values is created by the people, for the people. This is not the case in Malta.
A recent report published by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) has found that while Malta has registered an unprecedented growth over the period 2010 and 2017, the distribution of the wealth generated has not been distributed equally. In other words, the rich got richer. In fact, the same Eurofound study shows that 5% of our population, considered to be the richest in our country, have now garnered a wealth share which has increased from 33% to 40%.
This is a very unjust distribution of wealth which is creating huge rifts in our society.
Social Well-Being
As part of the Social Well-Being cluster, I am involved in a team effort to come up with new ways, contemporary and modern ways, of looking at issues related to many aspects of what we traditionally call social policy.
The issue of poverty, which emanates from the unfair distribution of wealth and from social issues which continue to drown the aspirations of those who aspire to better their lives, must be addressed urgently.
Social mobility is definitely a good starting point. Policies in this area cannot and should not exclude social benefits but we need a shift in focus to target people in poverty or at the risk of poverty and give them the opportunity to better their lives and make them less dependent on state aid.
Policies in this sector are naturally loaded with intrinsic values. Quality of life, dignity and respect play a key role when guaranteeing an adequate income for all. Too many people in Malta are living on the edge of poverty. They are just making it. This means that one small variation in their lives will destabilise entire families. This is the case when the main breadwinner of the family is taken ill. The whole family often becomes dependent on benefits which are not enough to cover basic needs.
In order to address and tackle this reality we must look at key aspects in the area of social wellbeing.
Relative Social Mobility, a person’s upward or downward movement in the social hierarchy compared to the movement of other members of the same (sometimes inherited) social class, along with social mobility, which is the degree to which, in a given society, an individual’s, family’s, or group’s social status can change throughout the course of their life, can bring about radical change for everyone to enjoy social well-being.
Many times, a child attains a higher or lower status than their parents. This is called Intergenerational Mobility. Policies addressing the younger generations is proving to be the key towards successful attempts at eradicating poverty in many societies around the world through Intergenerational Mobility. However, meritocracy and social justice must prevail in a society where wealth, income, and social status are assigned through fair competition.
Partit Nazzjonalista is working hard on a vision for Malta, based on the main theme of common good, a long-term socio-economic vision leading to 2030, values and good governance. The fourteen clusters are made up of a large group of people who believe in PN’s vision and aspire for a better Malta.