Not that the current state of affairs augurs any better, mind you.

The failure in Malta does not lie with democracy in itself. The problem here is lack of education which creates a tendency towards personality cults and fanaticism.

It is a well known fact that the bedrock of democracy is an educated populace. Only a person who has at least a minimum standard of education and reasoning faculties can analyse complex political and economic issues and see through propaganda. The PN recognized this and did everything in its power to provide quality education to everybody who wanted it.

But here lies the problem; not everybody wants it. There are complex social forces at work here . The colonial mentality of a people that for thousands of years eked a meagre living on a barren rock through subsistence farming and begging, is not easy to change.

Whole swathes of the population are so used to being on the bottom rung of the ladder that in their mind they cannot fathom ever being able to make a better life for themselves. I live in the South and I know what I’m talking about because I come across this abominable mentality every single day. Going to Bormla is like stepping through a time machine into the Malta of a hundred years ago.

This is the real place where time stood still, not Gozo. Here you hear parents complaining about having to take their children to school instead of putting them to work, because after all they never had any use for school so why should their children? And mind you, there are those who do put their children to work – especially if they are girls.

I am describing perhaps the worst den of ignorance in the country, but there are echoes of this kind of forma mentis all over the country. The survivalist mentality, which makes people content themselves with table-scraps, has served well a population constantly on the edge of extinction for thousands of years. It now holds them back in the cave because over so many generations of just surviving, the light of day has become unfamiliar and frightening.

All this is fertile soil for the idea of a “salvatur” to take hold. The superman who will take over their miserable lives allowing them to do away with the hardest chore of all, that of having to think for themselves; the hero who will give them a job, no matter how unproductive, and a wage coming in every week that they don’t have to think much about. And over and above that this superman will tell them that it is their right to be given a job, no matter how unqualified and useless they are or how badly they do that job, if at all.

No wonder there are families who still light candles at Mintoff’s shrine.

This is what democracy has to contend with in this country – but far from making me despair, though, the fact that we have had successes after all, in spite of all this damage, tells me that democracy can be made to work even against all odds. It’s a constant uphill struggle, but with people of real substance leading it CAN be done.

We are currently going through a bad time for democracy, and I’d say the worst is yet to come, but I am confident that the forces for democracy will rise again from the ashes of the PN stronger than before.

I am confident because I see so many valid talented young people making their way through the ranks of the party and so many more whom I speak to in all walks of life who do understand the importance of democracy and who are genuinely appalled at what is going on.

Bear in mind that the only people protesting outside parliament when the vote was taken to sell Maltese citizenship were young people from the Nationalist Party, and it was their photograph, not the prime minister’s, which made the headline news the world over.

I also see the shambles that Labour has become in only a few months, despite the hefty budget that seems to be the only thing propping it up.

So things are looking down right now, and unfortunately it will take years to fix the damage, but let us not despair. Democracy did work in the past and it will work again.

Winston Churchill