There is what I would call a lingering problem in theoretical physics. This problem boils down to the unification of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. The resolution for this issue would then be called a theory of everything. Physicists have a favourite candidate for such a theory, string theory, which calls for what Thomas Kuhn would have called a paradigm shift. A problem created on one level cannot be solved on that same level.

In Maltese politics there is a parallel issue of unification in the realm of the common good. The common good boils down to the good of everyone and everything in society. It is indeed a coordination problem between the individual well-being and the well-being of society. How can we unify urban development and the environment? How can we reconcile the health of our people and the well-being of our economy? How can we reconcile being an opposition and not being negative? 

I think that these questions were fully addressed and partially answered by Bernard Grech during his two-hour budget speech recently. Putting people before things and focusing on people-issues is crucial for political parties and their electoral programmes. Through identifying with underdog sectors in Maltese society Grech has done this. He said that the human person has to be the centre of all political activity. Economy has to be subservient to people.

So whatever the GDP of the country is, is the wealth being generated reaching those mostly in need? If the risk of poverty has not been diminished but increased, that increased GDP does not translate into putting people before things. That wealth has not trickled down as it should. The government then has failed to administer distributive justice. The government then has moved away from the common good.

The government’s reaction to Bernard Grech’s speech was the antithesis of dialogue

Putting people before things has a dramatic impact on the political philosophy of a party because it emphasises the uniqueness and everlasting dignity of the human being: we will see the application of this principle in issues regarding the social agenda like divorce, LGBTQ rights, abortion, poverty, housing, migration, salaries and so on and so forth. Putting people before things would then mean to respect the individual per se and coordinating that individual’s well-being with that of society. This is what the common good is all about.

This is another point that stands out in Grech’s speech. His numerous offers to help the government in the tackling of national issues is an implementation of this principle. He has said many times that everyone’s participation is crucial for the resolution of problems.  Everyone is necessary and, paradoxically, everyone may contribute to the other’s well-being. That is the whole point of dialogue. We learn from each other. So it was no cliché.

In the same act of offering to help Grech was crystallising this principle of dialogue. By changing the nature of the budget speech, by going against tribalism he started a paradigm shift. The government’s reaction to Grech’s speech was the antithesis of dialogue. It was a reactionary entrenchment into the status quo. It was an act of ‘establishment’.

We have forgotten or lost the habit of dialogue. Grech made the first step towards this shift.

If the other is seen as a collaborator – someone who can help us unravel our ideas, whatever that other says will not be perceived as a threat but, rather, as a tool that will help us uncover our layers of knowledge, getting rid of superficial layers usually formed through prejudices. The government has done exactly the opposite in its reaction to Grech’s speech.

Ideas do not belong to anybody and they belong to everybody. They are in fact, one may argue, common goods and indeed, part of the common heritage of mankind. What’s more, what is interesting is that to improve and make them more sophisticated, we need ‘others’. That is exactly what happened with the ideas of vouchers. It was a PN idea that the government ridiculed but took up and improved.

Grech might not as yet have developed a theory of everything but he certainly brought the PN one step closer to that goal.

Alan Xuereb, lawyer-linguist and political philosophy author