There was a very good analysis about the identity kit of a PN SG in The Malta Independent on Sunday.

It was simply excellent and obligatory reading for anyone considering the post.

I believe David Casa is good for the politics of influence and he has the gift of the gab, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily good to be SG. He should be deployed otherwise where his skills match the post.

Other names mentioned have the handicap of being candidates and very few of them would avoid the inherent conflict of interest in this.

Clyde Puli is a good man and highly organised but leaves some doubt as to whether he can avoid working on his own campaign in what will be a very difficult 6th district fight for two PN seats between several very good candidates.

Jean Pierre Debono comes over as only seeking the post to further his own ambition of being a candidate on the 7th district and running his wife’s campaign on the 9th. They’re not bad, but even the post he occupies now has led to conflicts of interest.

David Agius and Robert Cutajar are good with the PN grassroots and should be deployed as such, but I doubt they have the skills to be PN SG.

The following, in my opinion, can be excellent for the post of SG because they know what the post means, have the necessary skills, have a profile that appeals to both the PN grassroots and – crucially – to a wider audience, and have what it takes to avoid the conflict of interest with their own candidacy for Parliament.

In alphabetical order:
Karol Aquilina – young Siġġiewi mayor and brilliant political operator,
Beppe Fenech Adami – a great unifying force, resigning his deputy leadership,
Claudio Grech – young and highly savvy but might be keeping his powder dry.

This doesn’t mean that the many names being mentioned are not valid in a party that needs all its people and talents to remove this corrupt government.

But the key is to align their skills to those needed in the posts they occupy and not the other way round.

Once the laws are changed, groups only serve to perpetuate the perception of difference.

You don’t change the perception of women by joining a women’s group and speaking at conferences about women or giving interviews “as a woman”.

That just reinforces the ghetto walls.

You do it by joining the mainstream and staying there.

You’re talking to a woman who has been in the mainstream since her early 20s. I know what I’m talking about.

Of course it’s been difficult, and of course there’s a lot of misogyny, but I dealt with it directly, not by joining women’s groups for moral support.

I still deal with it directly. Look at all the insults I receive, which would never be directed at men. Do I go crying to some women’s group?

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

No, people should not corral themselves, whether on the basis of gender (for which read, women), sexuality (for which read, anything that is not heterosexual), ethnic origins or skin colour (for which read, black).

If you want to be taken as part of the mainstream, join it.

I disagree. The worst thing any woman can do, for example, is join a women’s network or women’s group or be quoted ‘as a woman’.

If you are fighting in a system which corrals you by gender, don’t make it worse by corralling yourself.

This indifference you talk about – which is predominant in multicultural western countries – wouldn’t be such if it weren’t for the establishment of formal ethnic and minority groups a few decades before who petitioned, paraded and protested for equality.

Malta is still 40 years behind (divorce issue, anyone?) and the average Maltese Joe is essentially a xeno/homophobic, self-centred hillbilly, with little to no education – not to mention horrid dietary tendencies and customs – and you just cannot expect of him to be indifferent to gays and ethnic minorities just because the culturally-developed
westerner is.

Hence, as much as I wish that we lived in a society without prejudice and which doesn’t make a special case of minorities, having these groups is a necessary first step towards achieving the situation
where even discussing this matter would be unnecessary, never mind having an LGBT group.

Just my two cents.

A modest, but heady, distillation.

Except for the “massive laghqi” proportion of the electorate, that should give a clear majority.

Gay and male

Myself, and speaking as a heterosexual male, I would much rather walk into a room and be assailed by all the women. The alpha male seems to be defined by the number of women slept with nowadays, and there’s no point to life unless one attains the status of alpha male.

Failing that, walking into same room, I would rather have my sexual orientation and indeed my sexualness (my own terminology here – I define it as the quality of being a sexual being) ignored, and be remarked upon for all the other qualities which make me, me.

Which is why I’ll never be head-hunted by Labour.

Labour will either recruit you if you’re a massive laghqi b’hafna flus, or gay. If you’re gay, laghqi, and loaded, you’ll have them swooning.

Oh, I’m sure he’ll get over that.

The last thing the Nationalist Party needs is more machinations of the Jean Pierre/Kristy Debono power couple.

And while I’m on the subject, if she wants to be taken seriously, she should stop bleaching her hair, and wearing a truckload of makeup, ridiculously inappropriate clothes and that ‘lights are on but nobody’s home’ facial expression.