It’s said that bad workers blame their tools. It is not their fault that they had not done a better job, it is the tools’ fault, they say.
Bad preachers blame the congregation. It is not their fault that they are not communicating the Word of God, it is the congregation’s fault, they say.
Arrogant politicians blame the voters. It is not their fault that they were not re-elected, it is the voters’ or the party’s (as if voters are the passive puppets of the party leadership) or the man on the moon’s fault, they say. Some believe that their non-election is akin to the biggest crime against humanity committed these last 100 years.
On dinosaurs and lemmings
I do not wish to idealise voters but neither do I rubbish them.
Many people I meet nowadays are as cynical about Maltese voters as the French novelist, Louis Ferdinand Celine, was about French voters. He said: “I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it’s certain they will win.”
I do not consider most people to be corrupt or idiots or, worse still, corrupt idiots. Different people have different values and world views. They populate different levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Are the likes, needs, hopes, aspirations, fears, joys of someone earning €1,000 a week similar to those of someone earning €1,000 a month? And who says that the former can take better decisions than the latter? Is the world view of a skilled worker less valuable than that of a university graduate?
The level of entitlement of some social classes and the pseudo-intellectual snobs that inhabit them is disgusting.
On the other hand, I do not idealise voters. I do not believe in ‘vox populi, vox dei’. Voters are not always right. I do not believe that all opinions are equally valid. I do not believe that an uninformed decision is as good as an informed one.
The politics of the Good Samaritan
Voters are not always right but they always have the key to power in their hands. They give it to those whom, wisely or unwisely, they want to give it to. Arrogant politicians who do not recognise this basic truth have the same destiny as the dinosaurs, worse still, the lemmings.
The first and most fundamental step of any one in a position of leadership is to start from the hopes, joys and anxieties of the people not from his or her dream for society, even if the politician’s dream is in fact something extremely positive. (The same applies to Church leaders.)
Does it make sense to offer what one believes to be the best champagne to someone who feels no need to drink it? You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
That’s the starting point not the end point of a leader’s journey.
I do not consider most people to be corrupt or idiots or, worse still, corrupt idiots- Fr Joe Borg
A good communication strategy is not the second step. The second point step, which is so close to the first that they can be conjoined, is a genuine love and respect for the people and a desire to be of service. This means a determination to build politics on the spirit of the parable of the Good Samaritan – as clearly explained by Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti – and on the spirit of the Lord’s washing of the disciples’ feet. These two images should be engraved in the heart and mind of any good politician with a big heart instead of the ambition to acquire a big wallet.
Utility bills and EU accession
The communication strategy is the third step. Let me illustrate.
Eddie Fenech Adami dreamt (I believe that a politician without a dream is worse off than a politician without votes) of Malta joining the EU. Before the 1998 election, there was no majority in favour of joining. People were more concerned about the high utility bills than anything else. Fenech Adami did not abandon his dream.
He strategically promised people that they will decide in a referendum about EU membership once the conditions are known. People were offered a win-win situation. They could vote Sant and high utility bills out (a physiological need they felt at the time) without obliging themselves to join the EU (a self-actualisation need they did not feel).
Also note that the emphasis during the EU referendum campaign was not based on the wonderful values of the European project per se but on the financial benefits that we would get if we join and on whether one could or could not engage in hunting and trapping.
The vote of the 1998 election and that of the EU referendum was one based on the lower strata of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs not on the loftiest ones.
That is an example of a strategy that starts from people’s immediate and legitimate needs but which helps them realise higher needs that were not immediately felt.
The best communication strategies generally are not ones based on an ‘either/or’ but on an ‘and/and’ tactic. Arrogance gets us nowhere. Looking down at people drags us all down. Good governance, ‘saltna tad-dritt’ (two concepts that most people do not understand) and the fight against corruption objectively are of prime importance.
But of more immediate importance for most people are bread and butter issues which are so urgently pressing because more and more people are in danger of metaphorically having bread but no butter. If the link between both sets of need is not credibly established the impasse will not be broken.
One tends to lose hope that this can be done as the biggest obstacle to this actually happening is presented by the numerous prima donnas and inflated egos fluttering around. However, I still have hope as I believe in the good sense and goodness of most people.