An intelligent and honest young man recently asked me: “Should I go into politics?”

With the ever-increasing distrust in politicians in Malta and worldwide, it is very brave of him to even consider that option. Mocking himself, he added: “I might be doing it because I have a Messiah complex and am a publicity seeker.”

“So why are you hesitating then,” I asked him without asking which party he is considering joining.

“I am afraid that I will compromise my integrity. I do not like clientelism. Do I stand a chance of making it to parliament if I am not ready to trade favours for votes? Do I have to become corrupt and sell my soul to businessmen to get their financial support for my campaigns? Do I have to embrace partisan tribalism and defend my party even when it is wrong?”

It was not at all easy for me to answer these questions, having contested eight general elections and spent 30 years in parliament, struggling with such issues in my daily life. I told him that it is possible to be a successful constituency politician serving citizens without having to dispense illicit favours. You must be close to voters through home visits, participate in the life of the community, ready to take calls and following up on requests for help. Try to under-promise and over-deliver.

There is only a small number of people who will never be satisfied with what you do and will hop from one candidate to another demanding favours that they do not deserve. There will be rival candidates who will be ready to give them what you have refused. Most of the people who approach you for help are reasonable and do not demand the impossible or the illegal.

It is also possible not to sell your soul to a businessman to finance your campaigns. Keep your campaigns modest even if you will be competing with some others who spend as much, if not more, than their party, in breach of the very lax regulations we have on campaign financing.

Have a good social media presence as that is where most people are today.

I told this young man that, after all, he was not going into politics to make money. So, he can be relaxed about getting elected or not. While doing all he can to get elected, it will not be the end of the world if he is not.

Confessing my sins

The most difficult question to answer is what to do when you disagree with the party line, especially when your party is in government and you are sitting on the government benches, more so when you are a member of the cabinet.

As a sinner among sinners in a sinful world, I tried to be guided by what Martin Luther King said in his essay ‘A tough mind and a tender heart’, that an effective and principled politician has to try and achieve a difficult balance of opposites: “The idealists are not usually realistic and the realists are not usually idealistic.”

You must be close to voters through home visits. Try to under-promise and over-deliver- Evarist Bartolo

Luther King goes on to say: “Jesus recognised the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world. So He said to them: ‘Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.’

And He gave them a formula for action, ‘Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves’… We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.”

As we need good people in politics, I reminded him of the words of Don Lorenzo Milani, the Italian priest who dedicated his life to the poor and the disempowered, when he urged the young to “soil” their hands with politics in the struggle for justice: “What is the use of a person with clean hands if he keeps them in his pockets? Use them!”

I told him to ignore those who keep their hands in their pockets and pontificate to those who ‘soil’ their hands with politics.

Plunging into politics is like diving into a stormy sea. Expect those from the safe shelter of the shore to lecture you self-righteously on what to do as you swim as best as you can trying not to swallow too much water and not to drown.

In my conversation with this young man, I remembered the still relevant words of Pope Francis at the Presidential Palace, in Valletta in April 2022: “May you always cultivate legality and transparency which will enable the eradication of corruption and criminality, neither of which acts openly and in broad daylight.” 

Condemning the type of economic development which is, in fact, “false prosperity” dictated by profit and consumerism, he said that Malta “must therefore be kept safe from rapacious greed, from avarice and from construction speculation. Instead, protecting the environment and the promotion of social justice are optimal ways to instil in young people a passion for healthy politics and to shield them from the temptation of indifference and lack of commitment.” 

Next time I meet this young man I will confess to him my political sins. Not because that will absolve me. But in the hope expressed by Marc Bloch in his ‘Strange Defeat’ which he addresses to the younger generation in France to learn from the faults of the generation that led France to capitulate to Hitler in 1940 in six weeks:

“I ask them to reflect on the faults of their elders. It matters little whether they judge them with ruthless severity or pay them the rather contemptuous and grudging tribute of that amused indulgence that adolescents are prepared to accord to age. The important thing is that they should realise what those faults were, so that they may be in a position to avoid them when their turn comes.”

Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.