It has been a great experience, a privilege in fact to be given the chance to stand as a candidate for the European Parliament. I am encouraged and hopeful for a good result without losing the sense of realism that ought to accompany anybody on this kind of journey. If I am elected , I shall serve with unwavering commitment to both my electorate as well as to the ideas and principles I hold dear.
I believe that truth should be the driver of the political process. In all of our choices, we can be guided by a desire to live within its shade or, instead, to do whatever appears to be most convenient at the time, to take the path of least resistance or greatest popularity. We will be cast and characterised according to where we choose to stand on the great issues of our time. On hunting, I have made my position very clear from the outset. I respect the ongoing legal process in which our government is seeking to protect the preservation of a number of hunters' practices and I will fully support its outcome. My voice however, will always be one that urges curbs on any practice that threatens the sustainability of a species. I will promote the enjoyment of our environment and natural life in its fullest beauty. Some sprang to silence me, some claimed they were both with me as well as against me. Some made no secret of the fact that it was voter considerations that pushed their pen and I make no secret that it is truth considerations that will push mine.
In the parliament, we need people who will continue to defend the particular characteristics of this country even where they go against the current and defy the European model. We should continue to hold the flame for the unborn child. Our agenda should not be simply to prevent the right to procure an abortion in this country but also to act to limit it everywhere else in the Union. Is that charging at windmills ? Perhaps it is, but let there be a nation that refuses to go with the flow on this. On divorce however, we cannot continue to ignore the social realities that are mushrooming all around us. We need to look at truth in the eye and determine whether our society and its members are better off or not with the current legislation. We need to come to terms with the fact there are Maltese persons who are asking to be given the legal tools to break with their past and start afresh within a context of rights and obligations. Today, we are a nation in denial that believes that because we have no divorce we have no broken relationships.
Why would a pregnant woman cross deserts and seas to escape her country? To give a better life to her child is one answer. She wasn’t pregnant when she left is another, but got raped at every border crossing. These are the truths we cannot turn our face away from. Our battle should not be with those at the edge of our shores who ask for refuge and deserve it. Let us continue to engage instead, with the hard-heartedness of those in Europe who would sweep this problem under our carpet. We need, and must strongly claim, more money to provide humane reception to those who are held here and more material expressions of burden sharing. We also need to realize that this is not a temporary problem. Africa is not going to provide for its own overnight, neither is some mysterious God of Geography going to move us out of the way.
When all is said and done, votes counted and winners garlanded, I will look at my campaign expenses. Twenty thousand euros is what each candidate ought to have spent or benefited from regardless of direct payments or donations received. I was struck, in the last general election, by the adamant refusal to compromise on truth taken by some candidates with respect to their expenditure. Some did not present their expense declaration, to avoid taking false oath, and others simply refused to run a campaign in excess of the allowable one thousand three hundred euros. You cannot canvass a district on that, neither can you canvass all the electorate in Malta and Gozo on twenty thousand euros. What you can do is say the truth, always. That is what I plan to do
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