Issue 40 - March 2012

• Q&A - To feel the reality you have to live on the ground

Nick Callus

• Connecting with your Audience Jonathan Cremona

• Strategic & Marketing Concepts For The IT Industry

Lorenzo Mulè Stagno

Let’s have an election before

StarringVictor Calleja

The Executive40 www.the-executive.biz

Let’s have an election before

Victor Calleja

The ExecutiveOpinionIssue No. 40 - March 2012

www.the-executive.biz The Executive 41

A ll I have been hearing lately is shrill talk about crises, launching me into a crisis myself because I

seem to be suffering from crisisitis.

The world and its sorry economy seem to be coming to an end - now isn’t that a headache-inducing crisis? Calendars which were reputably devised by some Mayans seem to indicate the end by December 2012.

I cannot imagine any betting company taking any bets about the end of the world - although we are an odd type us humans and bet on all sorts of madness. I once saw a few sporty types gathered round a table in mid-summer with a few glasses filled with honey. And some enterprising soul would take bets on which glass the first fly would alight on.

The economy of the world seems to depend on bankers, betting companies and some geeks running Facebook and Google. And I could bet the last cent of Bill Gates’ money that Google earns oodles of money from betting sites and their advertising. If betting and politicians keep us going are we surprised we are in such a mess and in constant crisis?

On the other hand some say business is like playing roulette or placing huge stakes on the betting field. Would Richard Branson, the famed blonde guy with the big smile, be where he is today with all his fame and billions, if he did not dare where hardly anyone went? Isn’t what he did like betting on a horse without legs? He believed in himself - or his horse - and went on putting his money and his vision in things which seemed senseless. And he made it – big. Like him I am sure there were many who dreamt, bet their lives on whatever project they believed in, and failed abjectly. We do not hear of those silly failures of course. But failures add colour to our life - the failed entrepreneurs usually try again and again till they get it right. And just like gamblers at all casinos most of them fail to ever strike it rich.

So are we, and the world’s economy, like all gamblers, doomed to fail? I started off saying something about a crisis. Strange world this of ours. While some parts of the world had earth-moving crisis of unemployment and hardly any future, our problems ranged from buses’ schedules to some parliamentarian saying he didn’t like the fact that we still used tape recorders in court. I had to rewind that part of the

speech and listen to it over and over again. And each time I shed tears of tragic mirth like never before.

It is strange that a government nearly commits hara-kiri at this time; stranger still that it does it for a tape recording. Strangest is that in this day and age someone still uses, and actually finds, tapes to record testimony.

We, as a nation, love the electoral process. It is hardly connected to democracy - our love of anything political stems from our need to have rivalry and find fault with anything which is not closely allied to our own “tribe”. And we also love having fun - even if the fun is calling our rivals all sorts of strange epithets. Furthermore - and more fundamentally - if we did not have elections Maltese betting firms, legal or not, would have a bleak future.

So if our economy, like most world ones, thrives on gamblers and betting firms we should all push Dr. Gonzi and Dr. Muscat to sit down together, call a truce in their ongoing spat and decide to hold an election every year. Maybe this will be costly but if we do it often enough we could at last get the hang of it and not take a century to know who won, who lost and who drew the rabbit out of the electorate’s hat. Costs in fact will be borne by an economy that will surely thrive, as the more elections we have the more betting we can fling ourselves into. There will be bets of who wins and how long the government will take to fall off its perch.

This will definitely help the economy move on and become a leading one amidst all the turmoil and suffering in Europe. We will have some serious betting happening to stir the economy into top gear which will make us all forget any crises in the world or at home. And then the serious betting starts.

And after that all will be hunky dory.

Victor Calleja has been involved in publishing, marketing, and anything concerning the written word, for over thirty years. He is now a part-time but very opinionated journalist who delves deeply into a number of subjects.

Failures add colour to our life - the failed entrepreneurs usually try again

and again till they get it right

Issue No. 40 - March 2012

The Executive Opinion