I have to admit that it wasn't an easy decision to take. Since the Prime Minister called me to his office a few months ago and asked me to make this bold step, I felt weighed by the responsibility that comes with it. Standing for the general election wasn't something I had in mind to do, at least not in the immediate. A young engineer, still looking to settle down, already active in a local council and with a Masters dissertation to finish in a few months' time, wasn't really planning to be involved so intensely in what will probably be a very hot and challenging campaign. Blogging and writing were already time-consuming enough. Adding house-visits and campaigning wasn't really on the line.
But after due consideration, I felt I had to say "yes". The call of duty prevailed. Because that's what genuine politics ultimately is: a call of duty. A duty towards your country and towards your people. A tool to be used responsibly and not to be abused for one's own ends.
I said "yes" because I believe I have a valid contribution to make: both to my country, Malta, the island I love and cherish, and to my party, which with fresh blood and fresh ideas can still prove itself to be the better option. Sure enough I happened to jump aboard at its roughest of patches, but I'm sure that it will manage to emerge from it stronger than before. The pity is that many are being let down by a show which is turning politics into a dirty game of back-stabbing played by unscrupulous beings, instead of an arena existing "for the sake of noble actions", as Aristotle once described it.
What is the contribution I want to make? An engineer by profession, I come from a field of work where we are continuously required to find the root causes of problems and address them, through logic, reason and careful study, without losing ourselves in artificial imagery and rhetoric.
As a blogger, I like to present my thoughts and ideas clearly and bluntly, but without setting them in stone. In full awareness of my human fallibility, better logical arguments and new information can make me change my opinions any time, though never the principles behind them.
As a musician, I appreciate the importance of creativity and the arts, and the higher dimension there is to life than just the material quest for money. A sense of ethics which we lost from society, from the market, and even from politics, and which must be restored back, starting from the political arena.
As an athlete, I know that achievements in life come only after a lot of sacrifice and hard work. That nothing comes for free, that every right is accompanied by duty, and that the essence of justice and meritocracy is striving for equality in opportunity, not imposing equality in outcome.
And as a sole local councillor on behalf of my party in Gudja for the past six years, I've learned that there's much more to gain by seeking to persuade rivals through ideas, initiatives, and constructive criticism, than by shooting off at those who don't agree with you, while keeping loyal to the party on whose ticket you were elected.
An engineer, blogger, musician, athlete and local councillor. Not the most common of mixtures for someone in politics. Hopefully, it proves out to be a positive one.
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