Mark Anthony Sammut

The older I get, the more I realize that the greatest divide in our country lies neither in social nor in economic classes. It lies in politics. And the deepest differences in our political rivalry lies not merely in colours and flags. It is ingrained in our mentality. Labour's General Conference last week saw a resurrection of the Mintoff personality. Joseph Muscat never misses an occasion to compare himself to the "Great Saviour", from contesting on his district, to bringing over Mintoff's daughter to address the delegates. We also endured a number of candidates, from 'experienced' ones to the new young ones, hailing how great Mintoff was and how Gonzi has ruined their lives. This led me to question: how is it possible that people in their twenties actually believe this? Undoubtedly, Mintoff's declared plan to "create a socialist generation" succeeded in its entirety. The traditional Labour voter still believes that he depends solely

Due to the current prevalent political climate in our country, in this week's running blog I decided to write about how running can also symbolize a political philosophy. The long-distance runner yearns for freedom. It's that inward call for freedom that calls him to the outside, to discover his potential, to test his limits, and to go beyond what he has achieved so far. The runner does this repeatedly, through his own individual choice. And he does it even when it implies sacrifice, because he knows that it's only through sacrifice that he can earn satisfaction on race day. The runner understands that he has no automatic right to finish the race or achieve a personal best. That right comes only if he has first done his duty during training. The runner therefore accepts the inequalities in the result, because he knows that it's that inequality which makes him strive to improve himself. He would never accept a "big government" that takes most of his hard

This article by Ranier Fsadni deserves a read: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120119/opinion/Take-Franco-seriously.402976 It also touches on the subject of hierarchy I wrote about in a previous blog: http://markanthonysammut.blogspot.com/2012/01/structure-and-hierarchy.html

I have copied this post by Dr. Jean-Pierre Farrugia from his facebook wall. This man has been a Member of Parliament for 16 years, he never black-mailed anyone to be given a ministry, and even though he's not Minister Joe Cassar's 'little child', he gave his input in the health reform without expecting any merit. You had much to learn by simply looking around you Franco. Ir-rekord tieghi – imxejt kuxjenzjozament – Minn Jean-Pierre Farrugia F’mument daqshekk krucjali ghal pajjizna nixtieq niccara l-pozizzjoni tieghi fir-rigward ta’ kif membru parlamentari f’Parlament bi Gvern b’maggoranza ta’ siggu wiehed biss jista’ jaffettwa l-istabilita’ politika fil-pajjiz. Halli mela nispjega z-zewg cirkostanzi f’din il-Legizlatura fejn il-media mmanipulat din is-sitwazzjoni fil-konfront tieghi u kif gibt ruhi jien.  Frar 2010: Kopja ta’ emails kunfidenzjali u ristrett ghall-Grupp Parlamentari tghaddi ghand il-media. B’hekk sar pubbliku fil-Malta Today u s-Sunday

Found this from another blog and it definitely deserves a read. This is an extract from Franco Debono's thesis on the organization and financing of political parties: “Members of Parliament of the party in office should be extremely reluctant to vote against the government, or even to hold individual ministers to account, if that would embarrass it.” “The team must not be weakened by some of its members making clear in public that they disapprove of the government’s policy.” “If they do not like what the team is doing, they must either keep quiet or leave.” ... “The chief sanction for ‘breach of party discipline’, in the form of public disagreement with party policy or failure to support the party line in a division, is expulsion from the parliamentary party.” ... “The political precondition for such an event would be very widespread feelings  amongst members of the party that under the Prime Minister they would have little o

In a few months' time, in a galaxy not so far away, leaders of the governments of EU countries will be discussing the problems their countries have been facing in the past years: - "We had to call an early election because of two straight years of economic recession" - "We had to go for a national unity government and heavily reduce our pensions because of a national debt exceeding 120% of the GDP" - "We had to increase students' University fees, and the sad thing is that more than 20% of them will not find employment" - "Our tourism levels suffered a huge decline, and our unemployment levels sky-rocketed." .... - "What about you Joseph? What happened there in Malta?" JM: "Well ... ehm ... to tell you the truth, together with Germany we were the only two EU member states which in the past five years have managed to boost our competitiveness and fiscal stability ... we are one of only 6 EU countries with yo

Back to my Marathon training. Two weeks since my last post, but the two long runs in these two weeks were significant. Last Sunday in Gozo I managed to increase my longest run in terms of time to 3 hours and 6 minutes,  trail running around the coast of Gozo from Xlendi all the way anti-clockwise to Xaghra. Today, I joined other St. Patrick's AC athletes in the Cirkewwa - Marsaxlokk  33.1km long run , my longest running distance so far. 3 hours 13 minutes in which I realized the massiveness of the Marathon distance. 26.2 miles 42.195 kilometers The distance that separates Marathon from Athens. The starting-line from the finish-line. Man from Hero. On the 27th kilometre today, I expressed my feeling of complete exhaustion to Ruben, who ran the whole distance with me. "The distance of the Marathon is greater than the human body" , he said. He went on to highlight that there lies the great difference between running the Half and the Full Marathon. Running the Full M

I can understand why a number of people still admire Franco Debono's stance for "breaking the ranks" and "going outside the norm". But while I understand the aura of the " I'm a Rebellion " mentality, especially from people who like Franco believe that they are always 100% right and the rest of society is always wrong, I question what is the democratic structure these people are advocating for our country. What clearly happened here is that a Member of Parliament believed that because he is intelligent and his proposals made sense, not only should these proposals and reforms be implemented, but that he should be the Minister to implement them. Maybe because after getting "Excellent" and "Keep it up" in all those school reports, he needed another "Excellent" for his proposals. No, for him it's not enough that he is listened to and others implement what he proposes. As he told the new Justice Minister Chris S

Dear Franco, I never believed you would actually come to this, but you did. In your personal quest to prove yourself as Malta's Messiah, you lost your sense of reason and logic. We thought it was about the mess of the Public Transport reform. But in your landmark 50 minute speech in Parliament during the vote of confidence in the Transport Minister, you spoke about Lou Bondi, PBS, justice, the right of a lawyer's assistance during interrogation...and never about what was done wrong in the reform. No mention at how you expected things to have been done differently. No suggestion at how you expected the mess to be resolved. And then, we realized it was not about the reform. It was about Manwel Delia's interest in contesting your district. And we were disappointed. Then we thought it was about the division of the Justice and Home Affairs portfolios from the same Ministry. You decided you should give a deadline. You extended it. The Prime Minister, who had already said

Some updates with my training progress. Apart from the usual tempo runs and speedwork, last weekend I did my longest run up to now:  27km . It was the first time I went over the 25km mark, and there were the first signs of protest from my body. Back-pain, knee-pain...a bit of everywhere-pain. I'm slightly worried about my knee after last year's injuries. In the last few weeks though, I discovered trail running. It seems the mud and soft soil help to prevent injuries and lessen the stress on your knees. In fact, yesterday I went for a lovely 23.3km trail run  along the Victoria Lines and Chadwick Lakes. Very strong force 8 North-Western winds, but nothing beats the sweet smell of the wet soil after the rain. And the good thing was that at the end there was no hint of the pain which usually starts showing after the 20km mark. It seems that trail running can maybe save my over-30km runs in January. We'll see how it goes. In these recent runs, I have thought about the link