A new year is an opportunity to chart the way for the changes we want to see around us and within. As this is my first column for 2022 I will share a few ‘political’ wishes for the year ahead with the readers of the Malta Independent.

Enhanced effort for a National Identity

This week I visited the Fairyland fun fair at Floriana and Valletta. At one point I realised I was surrounded by all things alien to the Maltese Christmas. Chopped Nordic pine trees or fibre glass glowing ones, deer effigies and huge bear structures. In Northern Europe where you cross deer on your country walks and where bears threaded at least in the past, these figures make the charm of Christmas, but do they in Malta? 

Don’t take me wrong, the atmosphere was very nice, and organiser’s effort appreciated, and yet I ask the question whether it would cross the promoter’s minds to produce an experience closer to what and who we are, closer to a ‘Maltese’ Christmas?

Obviously, Fairyland is a tiny indicator of a wider phenomenon. Last week I had a wake up call on our collective inability to represent a clear national identity when I met a friend who had been to Malta. He told me how puzzled he was that, while visiting museums and exhibitions around the island he found very little information about Malta’s independence and subsequent accession to the EU. I must avow that I do not have a comprehensive view of what is on display to the public across the islands, but could this lack of recognition of landmarks of our nation be due to the fact that we are gripped in a polarised reading of events?

I think as a nation we should be more aware of the need to promote what brings us together and what makes us Maltese. That might play its role as well to instil a wider sense of objectivity in public opinion which would be grounded more firmly in a common understanding of the shared path of the Maltese people.

More respect to collective intelligence

Another impending wish for 2022 would be to see an effort towards more objectivity in our assessment of political offers and developments. We need to start from the obvious. While PBS has always been under the control of the party in Government, Labour is now scoring unprecedented highs in the level of partisanship in news and agenda setting on public TV.  

If you look at it from a European comparative point of view you realise that Malta effectively has a state funded propaganda system designed and steered to keep the incumbent government firmly in place. The blatant degree of this makes us unique in Europe, for while several other countries have issues with some state control of public broadcasting, in no other country can you see the result we have at home, where the main news microphone is de facto reserved to Government spokespersons while opposition voices are treated with the journalist’s own voice-over. This practice alone is, in my view, a blatant breach of the viewer’s right to balanced information which should be also presented in a balanced fashion. 

With National TV setting the scene for a polarised reading of political developments, it is no surprise then that the great majority of public commentators and users of social media will indulge in very one-sided reactions. If no-one in this country believes in the importance of an objective and balanced reading of events, why should I? 

The state has a responsibility to ensure that public opinion is shaped in a healthy debate of pros and cons, infused by data and evidence rather than by the colour of your flag. We have reached a state where this call is becoming desperate, and with an election round the corner, we fear the worst, that Labour will now ensure to make best use of the monster it feeds to skew the will of the people in its favour. 

More on political choices, less on politicians’ misdemeanours

We ended last year in the midst of two main scandals with Labour Party protagonists taking the lion’s share of national debate. When you think about it, you realise there has been more debate on newspapers, social media and one would assume, canteen or living room chatter, on Justyne’s bravado of ‘taking care’ of her favourite footballer than on the fundamental decisions needed to handle the covid-19 pandemic while Omicron was spreading like wild-fire in Europe.

Is it too much to ask from 2022 if we dream of a world where the main debate is on the measures needed to secure better-paid jobs for our youths? Or how we should dedicate the 300 million of EU funding to environmental and research projects that the Government has not even started to implement one year down the line? Is it too much to ask for Labour to keep the front-page free of scandals of perverse love stories and money laundered or abused for us to discuss the future of our families, our businesses and our workers? Let’s talk in a week. Happy New Year to all!

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Peter Agius MEP candidate, PN spokesperson