Tabatha, to any Maltese party, all individuals are equal and alike, ghax il-vot ta’ kullhadd l-istess.

So Helga Ellul was frittered away on speeches to housewives, zaghzagh, anzjani and familji, and Ray Bugeja too, just like the other MEP candidates. She also spoke to the white-collar segment, because they were on the “to do” list too. Just the other MEP candidates.

It’s like the parable of the farmer who grew cheap cabbages, and one rare, precious orchid. He only had five gallons of water so he just hosed down everything, cabbages n’ all. Half the cabbages died. The single orchid died too. He was ruined.

No, thank YOU, Francis Said!

Spot on! Criticizing every single move, every single statement Simon Busuttil makes, will certainly help the 18,000 ‘switchers’ clear their mind and decide to return to sanity next time round.

For the last years, when polls put the Labour Party ahead and we kept harping about the Nationalist Party losing the election, which they would have anyway, the self-fulfilling prophesy contributed to the size of the loss.

From several comments here and elsewhere, Nationalists seem to be cutting more slack for Muscat than ‘their’ own leader Busuttil.

Now let’s hear from the many who think I’m nuts.

Simon Busuttil is walking a very thin line. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

However on this one he wanted to stress the fact that should anyone does the wrong thing. he or she must bear the political responsibility. He is right not to support any tainted politician whether (s)he comes from his own Party or the government’s.

I suspect that he may have consulted with George Pullicino before he made that statement.

Looking at it from a different angle, if no case is found against Pullicino, Simon and the NP would have won and if in the unlikelihood Pullicino is found guilty, then Simon would be right to have distanced himself from the errant MP, and then take appropriate action.

If hindsight is used to fashion one’s argument, then a little more time, in this case, will enhance hindsight at the emergence of the result of the police investigation.
My prediction is that sometime in the distant future a terse, ‘there was insufficient evidence to proceed against Pullicino’, will be forthcoming from the Acting Commissioner of Police.

In the meantime the suspicion will fester on and achieves Konrad’s goals. So the police are in no hurry to investigate, and it’s no wonder no one has spoken to Pullicino to-date.

[Daphne – Look at the way you consistently refer to “Simon” and “Pullicino”. The Opposition Leader by his Christian name, and the frontbencher by his surname: what does that tell you, and everyone else for that matter?]

@ Wot the Hack

That is why in Malta we have an overload of lawyers in politics, and previously, doctors. The nature of their business meant that they could officially leave for five or ten years and then pick up again where they left off.

Businessmen, focused on results and market development and retention can’t afford to take a break and then return to the market expecting it to have remained static in their absence. Unless the stint is/ was aimed at creating better market conditions for oneself.

That leaves two sorts, and professional politicians, as Baxxter states, are the exception.

An exception to the point that they’re the first to be isolated and booted out, and an enigma to the rest.

Having a legal or medical mentality at the helm, means that diagnosis is the chief tool used: these are professions where recognition and labelling are the order of the day. No surprise therefore that situations are rigid. There is a box for everything. If something is new, there is no in-between box for it to fit in. One thing cannot fit in two boxes.

Where does that put you, in politics, then Baxxter? You are not this. You are not that. A label for you does not exist.

Instead of maximising and exploiting the different strengths in all the the professionals and other individuals willing to join the NP in this effort, what one absorbs is a reduction of all qualities to those already known and easily recognised in an effort to stay on the precise path, with the precise same people, and the precise same tactics. After a round of musical chairs.

The NP should be isolating qualities and focusing on how all these qualities can pool their resources and strengths to create a better product, and to communicate this in the best way possible.

The weakest point in all businesses, is many times not their perception of themselves, nor their product, but weak market perception where frustrated communication has not done a good job.

The decision to isolate and pool qualities in each and every resource coming forward to the NP can be done in under an hour.

Procrastination is delay and vice-cersa.

The thinking is not nearly “a vote a minute” as a goal.

The thinking is foggy and slow, fuddled and unsynchronised.

Time is being lost.

In fact Simon Busuttil was nowhere close to accusing George Pullicino of any wrong doing. He just repeated what previous party leaders have said before him and therefore that any corruption carried out by anyone, be it PN or PL, has to be punished. That is what the Nationalist Party creed has always been and I hope will be.

[Daphne – Please try very hard to understand this. What Simon Busuttil actually meant to say or what he said is irrelevant. The only thing that counts is what people hear.]

One reason for what you say, Baxxter, is that in Malta, entering politics is seen as the ultimate career path one can take – an end in itself – the achievement of status. And it is chosen by many who either have not pursued another career, or have failed in one. Silvio Parnis, Stefan Buontempo (Il-Konsulent tal-Hawsink), Silvio Schembri (tas-sebghat ihluq), Ian Borg (did he ever practice as a lawyer?), Joe Mizzi (tal-Autobusssisss) – what career achievements can they claim?

In reality, outside Malta, it is individuals who have led a successful career in private or public life who enter politics. They are the sort of individuals who have a choice, and they can afford to leave politics at any time because they can pursue something else successfully. RCC is probably in that class.

Unless the sophistication of the voters changes, things will not change. I get the impression that here in Malta voters do not want those in power to be more successful than themselves.

He has been saying for two years that he wants the PN to be Partit tan-Nies. What he means by that is still very much a mystery.

I was looking forward to this Ideat Convention, thinking I would learn a bit more of Busuttil’s vision. In his Nuremberg-esque “diskors importanti” (as described on Il-Mument in the morning) Busuttil said the PN is changing and gave proof of that.

“We had a black person, a mother of a gay person and a trans-sexual addressing this Convention! See, we are changing!” I was not in the audience but had I been I would have really wished I weren’t.

So, we are changing because we have a black, a gay’s mother and a transgender in our midst. Then, two years after losing the election and two years after winning the leadership race pledging, amongst others, a stronger presence online, you go on NET TV’s YouTube Page and all that has been available for the past three bloody months is a clip of the Bishop of Gozo saying mass at the Ta’ Pinu Sanctuary, reminding NET TV viewers that they can watch the mass every Sunday at lunchtime, when One TV would be streaming Joseph Muscat’s Sunday message.

Then you open the newspapers today and the headline on The Times is that the PN Convention proposes discussion on abortion and euthanasia.

I am very perplexed and so are so many people I speak to.

How sweet this Kevin is. He might be good at giving strategic advise to some Scouts Group, but surely not to a major political party.

I wonder who Simon Busuttil has surrounded himself with. It’s crucial for a politician to pick the right people.

Had he a decent adviser, she/he would have picked out the blunder while going through the speech before the convention.

That’s what advisers are there for. But, yes, Simon Busuttil didn’t read out a speech (he didn’t want to do like Muscat and use a tele-prompter) but did an Ed Miliband instead, with the same consequences.

Time is running out indeed.

It’s just that there’s no notion of career development within Maltese politics: you either go in as a stamp-licker and remain so, or you go in as MP until you’re voted out or sent off to Dar Malta.

Out of the couple of hundred employed by the two main parties, how many have built a career in politics or related activities? Very few. At a pinch, you could say that Richard Cachia Caruana did, for a few years when he was leading EU membership negotiations. Now he’s doing something else altogether. But then he was always the exception, and exceptional.

This is 2014, not Sicily c. 1900. The world is not an oyster but a giant competitive job market. Unless you offer a clear and rewarding career path, you will never attract excellence. The results are there for all to see – in the abysmal level of Maltese politics here and abroad.