Finding the will power to change | Sandra Gauci

Sandra Gauci, chairperson ADPD

After leading ADPD for almost three years, the challenges still are and remain generally the same—mainly, finding people who are both committed to the party ideals and have time available to dedicate to what seems a thankless job. Keeping up the enthusiasm is always a challenge. Results achieved are not always aligned to feedback received, as quite a number of them, though in agreement with our ideas, get cold feet at the ballot box.

The Constitutional Court case, which hopefully will reach some form of conclusion next January could possibly give some indication as to what the future has in store for our electoral system. To date, the electoral system is prejudiced against third parties. It has cost us blood and tears to get there but we did and now we are hoping against hope that we get a positive outcome.

There are a lot of people who do not want to vote and yet are still hesitant in voting outside a two-party template—that will be our main challenge in 2026. Getting people to trust you involves capillary work which needs to bring down years of tribalism. These people will not vote for us just because we are there on the ballot sheet. They will vote for us based on trust. At ADPD, we don’t have the luxury of having people who are blindly devoted to us. We are the misfits of politics and the pariah in a system which is bi-partisan. Our main challenge as a party will be to work intensely on a personal level with each person in our district. It will always be a challenge.

As regards the country, the challenges will be the obvious ones: Overpopulation, environment and traffic. These challenges are interlinked. The country has failed in attracting investment which is based on services but still keeps selling parts of the country to foreigners. The tiring work of protesting against the destruction of what is left of this country will continue, especially since now that it is reaching village cores. Development is not restricted to tourist areas anymore. No locality is being spared and none will remain the same. And who will build these horrors? Obviously, imported labour from third world countries. The mere importation of such labour is a thriving business in itself that nobody wants to delve into. But greed needs to be fed and these people are the perfect scapegoats in this equation of exploitation.

Traffic will always be a challenge, especially since nobody wants to take the bull by its horns and consider the car as a luxury. Even the prime minister gave up quite easily and dismissed it all by saying that Maltese love their cars. I love cake too but that doesn’t mean I can have it everyday for every meal. Votes and populism are more important for the main parties, it seems, rather than solving the actual problems.

And since social media is in fashion and dominates the agenda more than any backboned leader would, we, as a nation, will keep on grumbling and expressing our woes on Facebook, while comfortably sleeping with our car parked in front of our house.

To change things around we need the will power to do so. We aren’t there yet.

I wish you all a happy 2026.