On political bullying...

I have had varied and interesting reactions to my article of two Sundays ago on political bullying in schools. A number of parents approached me with the experiences of their own children, politically bullied at school. Some teachers shared with me their own stories of being bullied by students.

A teacher at one of the schools I mentioned wrote to me to agree with what I wrote. Another disagreed with me, writing instead of approaching the heads of school and taking up the issue directly with them. What made me most happy is that the behaviour of the offending teachers I referred to in my article has become decent towards my young relatives.

I stand by what I wrote a fortnight ago and will not retract a single word. As political bullying happened in the public space and an educational institution is a public space, the issue has to be raised in the public domain and not dealt with behind closed doors.

It is not the first time I have raised the issue. I raised it also during the EU referendum campaign in 2003 and appealed to heads of schools not to allow their schools to become partisan arenas to fight out gladiatorial contests between EU membership and partnership.

My scathing criticism of Professor Kenneth Wain had nothing to do with his involvement in favour of Malta joining the EU. My point was that having decided to take such an active and leading part in such a burning controversy he should not have been appointed chairman of the Foundation for Educational Services set up to take over from the Education Division the running and management of schools.

Having written about the evil of indoctrination in schools he should have been the first to state that the Malta-EU Information Centre (MIC) pro-EU membership crusaders should not have been sent to schools to indoctrinate students using soft subjects like the environment. That campaign camouflaged as objective and non-partisan was in fact one of the most organised and systematic experiences of political bullying in schools and that is why I opposed it so strongly. I have no doubt that I was right to do so.

Coming from a fervent Nationalist family I have no problem living with and loving persons who, to put it mildly, do not agree with me 100 per cent. What I cannot stand are those sanctimonious Nationalists who behave as if God is a Nationalist and that taking a stand against them is like committing a sin, its perpetrator sure to be damned for eternity.

Just the tip of the iceberg

I took up the issue of political bullying at school not just in defence of my relatives but also because I believe that such intolerance is just the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong with this country. A former teacher who reacted to my article says: "Political bullying is a reality in private and Church schools. It is institutionalised and has been going on ever since this country has been divided across party lines."

He goes on to refer to how his father - a nephew of Labour politician and writer Guzè Ellul Mercer - was treated when his uncle died and like his fellow Labourites was refused burial in consecrated ground. In those days Labour activists were threatened with hell for reading Labour newspapers and for voting Labour. Church bells were rung to drown the speeches of the Labour leaders. After Labour mass meetings housewives used to be mobilised to disinfect the squares where they were held. The Nationalist Party, with God on its side, not only did not condemn this repressive process of dehumanising Labourites, but also used these undemocratic politics to win one general election after another in the Sixties.

I have attended many funeral Masses of Labourites of the Sixties but at these Masses I have never heard a priest delivering a sermon condemning and asking forgiveness for such persecution carried out in the name of God. The Church has never recovered from that experience where it allowed itself to become a crutch supporting the Nationalist Party, crippling itself in the process.

But we cannot remain stuck in the past. We still need to develop our political culture to celebrate diversity and openness, and focus on the future. Our society has become stagnant where the forces of decay and stagnation strangle the forces of renewal and regeneration.

This does not bode well for a country that has tough challenges to face: regenerating the economy, creating jobs and wealth and instilling fresh life into public structures and services, to equip Malta and Gozo for the 21st century. Wide-ranging problems: debilitating structural deficit and public debt, environmental degradation, lack of fresh investment, de-industrialisation, loss of economic competitiveness, decaying public institutions, a corrosive culture of cronyism... have been allowed to pile up, their solution put away for another year.

A multi-party parliamentary democracy is essentially divisive, adversarial and competitive, but within a rich democratic framework all these forces of conflict have to be balanced with symbolic gestures and real acts of co-operation and collaboration if the national community is to grow and become more inclusive.

We have heard how European Union membership creates a new political and economic terrain that demands new ways of doing politics and business.

Heralding a new spring, the Nationalist Party declared its commitment to create the conditions for a new way of doing politics.

We have made some progress over the years but there is still a lot to be done to create a national community where we all feel equal because we are treated with equity and where all the national institutions are truly national and not politically tribal and dominated by partisan networks. The Nationalist Party is still using state institutions as if they were just an extension of its party networks, and still uses them exclusively to favour its in-group through job recruitment, career advancement and granting of public tenders.

Deep changes are needed in our local political culture to create one nation that celebrates diversity. Facing our problems together is the only way we can tackle them successfully. The challenges today are much more complex than before and require a new strategy and a closer working relationship between the country's political, productive and social forces. The local political culture of permanent confrontation at all costs will have to continue changing if we are to face successfully the new challenges of the early years of the 21st century and beyond.

evaristbartolo@hotmail.com