I hope you forgive me for taking my time to react to the electoral result. If you are one of the 187 people who gave me your first-preference last Saturday, I want to thank you for your trust, and I know that you’ll probably understand why you didn’t read any quick-fire reactions from me.
This is because you chose to vote for someone who thinks first and shoots second. Whether it is a one-on-one conversation that convinced you to trust me with your vote, or something I’ve said during a debate, or written in an article, you already know me as someone who chooses my words in a measured way. This doesn’t always serve well in a campaign culture that relies on witty click-bait moments, but I won’t change who I am for a campaign.
During this campaign there were a few people who asked me where I was, why I wasn’t participating as actively as before, and why I wasn’t pushing myself forward. I was told that my marketing was shit, and that I was making mistakes doing more for ADPD’s campaign than for my own.
Compared to 2019, I had less money to spend. My campaign cost me 380€ (I will break this down another time), compared to 5 years ago when I was able to spend over 3000€.
I could not run any Meta ads (that’s the adverts you see on Facebook and Instagram) on my own profiles as they would not verify my account. This is because my legal documents do not match my chosen name – Mina Jack.
I also chose to not pay for opinion pieces or Q&As in MaltaToday, as I had done 5 years ago. This is because I don’t believe in buying space in the press. Presence in the media should not depend on how much money you have to spend, but on your ideas. During an electoral campaign everyone should be given space to share their ideas, and when content on news portals is paid for by a candidate this should be clearly declared.
As we were four candidates, I also did not attend as many debates as I had in previous campaigns.
But the main reason why you didn’t see me, is because I put the majority of my energy in the campaign of ADPD. You might not have realised I was doing that, because indeed there is a lot of invisible labour in party politics. I’m talking keeping the website up to date, putting subtitles on videos, editing reels, replying to comments on social media, writing newsletters, fundraising, coordinating our candidates’ presence at debates, helping prepare messages for debates, coordinating some volunteers, coordinating interviews for other candidates with the press, coordinating the filming of our adverts, selecting the time slots for our adverts on TVM, accompanying other candidates to events, and more.
I can anticipate your questions – why be a candidate, if you’re also one of the campaign coordinators? Why couldn’t you delegate these tasks to anyone else?
Like 2019, the main reason I ran was to give an option to people who are looking for a progressive candidate who speaks with humanity on Migration and Reproductive Rights to give their first preference to. Whether my message in this regard was effective enough is up for discussion. From the result, I assume that it wasn’t.
Of 215 votes that were transferred after I dropped from the race in the 10th count, only 6% were not-transferred, with the majority of these 215 votes (66%) being transferred to the remaining ADPD candidates. I think that is a positive result, and shows that the majority of people who vote for me, believe in ADPD’s potential as a party.
I am sure that people who in 2019 had voted for me, chose to give their first preference to a woman this time round – Rachelle Deguara or Sandra Gauci. And I don’t blame them, if I was not running I would have done the same.
When it comes to delegation of tasks, as often happens, it is only in the last few weeks of a campaign that volunteers step forward to take over some tasks. Something I am very grateful for. However there are all the months before, where there is only a limited core of people that contribute consistently – this is the executive committee. While in 2019 I was just a candidate and was not serving on the party’s executive committee. Since then I have joined the executive committee, and in the last year I have served both as Deputy Chairperson, and most recently as Treasurer. Therefore the administrative burden of a campaign fell on me more now than it did 5 years ago.
As for the results of the party overall, I do not compare them to the separate AD and PD results of 2019, as PD had lost many big names by the time it merged with AD. AD+PD is no longer ‘AD’ and ‘PD’ but a new party. With new faces who were barely involved before like Sandra and Rachelle. The Cassola factor, and the increase in independent candidates is also not to be discounted. There were many more options for people to choose from beyond PNPL and this is positive.
We had a lack of resources, some of those for bureaucratic reasons, others for difficulties with the electoral system itself. But this was not only a resource issue, and I am not going to put the blame for our lacklustre campaign on anyone else. We didn’t manage our timing right and did not ‘explode’ and build momentum at moments when it was most needed.
Still, I consider the result – 1.2% – as a maintenance campaign. Not great, but not bad either. It is only 0.4% less than our results at the last general election. Additionally, for the 12 hours we had limited access to a database in the counting hall, of the 40% of boxes we were able to tally, over 95% had a vote for ADPD in them. This tells us that ADPD has a broad appeal across the country, and is no longer a party that is focused more in one district over another. This is the result that I choose to focus on as we will build our strategy for the next elections.
But indeed, the elections aren’t over. While my own personal campaign is over, 7 of my colleagues ran for different local councils. We will only know these results between Wednesday and Friday. They will likely show us the strength of our party in a less crowded field. Where often we are the only alternative to PNPL.
If you would like to keep following my work, and reading what I have to say I encourage you to sign up for my newsletter here: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/mina-jacks-newsletter/
MJ Tolu 
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