Tutto il mondo è paese. It is the scale that differentiates the various countries; the human frailties and needs are exactly the same.
Although we are poles apart from the US when it comes to size, global significance and diversity advancement, the electorate in both countries, and indeed all others, wants the same thing – change.
Civil Rights lawyer, Barack Obama in America has used it as his campaigning banner – “Change we can believe in”, and tells voters: “I am asking you to believe not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours”.
He is campaigning for an end to slash-and-burn politics. Something we Maltese are used to – the politics of personal destruction and the “with us or against us” syndrome.
“Using participation in government decision-making meetings as a carrot for supporters and a stick for the unfaithful is a grand tradition in politics”, says Jeff Eaton, a 20-something American blogger. And of course again this happens everywhere, the only thing that changes is the scale. In the US it is big international conglomerates and in our little pond it is our own big fish.
No wonder more and more people are believing that it is the industrialists who are running governments, depending of course on their payoffs.
Now Alfred Sant did try to bring about a change in ‘96, but it blew up in his face because he was sabotaged by Dom Mintoff and he upset the electorate too quickly by hiking the electricity bills.
Had he not let himself be goaded by Mintoff and waited a little before he raised the utilities charges, who knows where we would be today?
We might not be in the EU for one. Although he might have changed his mind, as he has now. But we don’t know that.
There is no doubt that the PN did well in many quarters. It has failed though in changing the “with us or against us” stance. On the contrary, it perpetuates the ‘club’ syndrome.
Unfortunately, the Labour Party has now given up on trying to change the partisan bias that is insinuating itself even further. So we can expect a backlash if it wins the election.
The writing is on the wall, there will be no change in which boys get the prizes, depending on who they back, whoever wins. Oh, and the girls will get some crumbs.
Was Sant naïve in thinking that people would not let partisan leanings affect their judgement? Is the government right in thinking that only the faithful to the PN can be trusted with office?
Some would say “about time” that we saw a change in who gets chosen and who gets excluded. But that just means a change of faces, not a change in the intrinsic unfairness of choosing not on the grounds of merit but on whether the individual has backed the winning party.
In the US all the other presidential candidates are riding on the “change” slogan, with Hilary Clinton saying that it is not enough to preach change, but that you need the experience to deliver it – i.e. she has it, Obama hasn’t.
Where of course we lag far behind, is in our diversity of candidates. It will be a long time before we have a woman standing for the leadership of any party, let alone a person from a different ethnic background. Our politicians also lack passion. Maybe because of the lack of diversity. They seem to regard their job as any other profession – a job that has to be done.
Like being a lawyer, which a lot of them are. They preach values, but the value of their own work escapes them. They forget that they are in parliament not to fight the other side, but to fight for their constituents' rights. Their passion is reserved for smearing the other side, rather than getting us to believe and trust them.
Ultimately, we all want security through jobs, good healthcare, and good education for our children and we need to know that none of these needs depend on which side one votes for.
All the parties promise to deliver the goods and of course we vote for the party we think is most likely to deliver. But once the chips are down and the ministers are ensconced in their domains, will partisanship affect who slides down the snake and who climbs the ladder and will the dice be loaded?
Corruption, even in democracies, though not as overtly rampant, is still a problem. We cannot expect politicians to be saints, they are after all ordinary mortals and they are not going to be perfect.
But the least we can expect is that they are sincere about the values they pronounce on.

pamelapacehansen@gmail.com