Parliamentary democracy is the best tool by which to ensure that the will of the people is being enforced by a government that executes the wishes of the majority of citizens. When well run, democracy manages to select those parliamentarians who are best able to strive for the acceptance and implementation of the electorate’s expectations.

Yet democracy can be a cruel business. Among its mechanisms feature those by which candidates for elections get chosen. Not all countries manage the procedure in the same way. In Malta, despite the criticism we are prone to make about ourselves, we should not be critical regarding how this side of affairs is run here.

In other EU countries, parties choose a limited list of candidates and the order in which they place names clearly indicates who is likely to be elected and who not. Choices are made according to criteria arising from the political tactic adopted by the leadership. It happens (as is the case presently in the European Parliament) that candidates are selected who have had almost nothing to do with parliamentary activity, at the expense of people who were very active in it.

I met a number who have met this fate. They would all the time be working quite hard in Brussels and Strasbourg. However, even before the election campaign had started, they have been left with little chance of eventually being able to continue with their work. 

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WHAT HAPPENED TO GOZO?

I was asked recently how Gozo had done since Malta’s accession to the EU.

To argue that during the last 20 years life in Gozo has improved is to state the obvious. On this basis however, it would be ridiculous to pretend that the improvement happened because of EU membership. An essential column on which Gozitan life depended -- agriculture -- has surely been very badly affected. What really progressed were tourism and above all real estate for take up by foreign clients (including those from Malta).

Was this all that the EU had to deliver? And how true is it that growth in tourism was the result of EU membership?                         

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POPPIES

The poppy season is back. When I was young, poppies would rapidly spread across Maltese fields between the later weeks of March and mid-June. One could see poppies all over the fields. With time they seemed to have gone into decline. Possibly construction was restricting the space where they could flourish. Today you can see some flowers growing on their own at the side of secondary roads, rarely together in a clump.

                        In the cities of Strasbourg and Brussels there is a different story to tell. Poppies find a place in the side corners of public gardens where even if they are ignored when compared to the flowers which grow there “officially”, in their humility they possess a grace which the others lack. And they stay alive there for longer than in Malta where given the hot temperatures which prevail at the dry beginning of the summer, they soon shrivel.

                        I’m told that the botanical family to which poppies belong is so robust that despite climate warming, it runs no danger of soon becoming extinct. I am not so convinced and believe it would not be a bad idea were we to try and give poppies a boost so that they could recover lost terrain