Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1545062
I grew up in Nadur. I studied law at the University of Mal- ta. When I qualified, I stayed. When my friends asked me what I was going to do with my life, I told them I wanted to be in politics, not to build a career, but because I genuinely believed I could help fix things. They looked at me the way people sometimes look at the young when they say something like that. Half encouragement, half doubt. I understand that look. I have seen it a lot over the past eight months. My opponents want you to be- lieve that 30 is too young. That I have not earned the right to lead yet. That Malta, in uncer- tain times, needs the safe hands of experience. What they mean, of course, is that Malta needs more of the same, another term of the same decisions, made by the same people, producing the same results, dressed up in the same language of progress. I ask you to look at those re- sults honestly. A typical home now costs around €400,000. Young people are leaving, not because they do not love this country, but be- cause they cannot afford to stay in it. Families sit in traffic for an hour to travel 10 kilometres. Our hospitals are crumbling under the pressure of bad plan- ning, yet government keeps claiming they are world class, while patients wait months to be seen. Our coastlines and open spaces disappear one planning permit at a time. And when anyone asks hard ques- tions, the answer is always the same: 'Look at the numbers.' I have looked at them. Growth is real. I have never pretended otherwise. But growth that does not reach people's daily lives is not success, it is just a statistic. And Maltese families do not live by statistics. They are living in traffic, sitting in the waiting rooms, yearning for the mort- gage they cannot get, and walk- ing through the village square they no longer recognise. This country needs to start breathing again. Nifs Ġdid is not just a slogan. It represents a fresh start, rooted in a simple belief that government exists to make ordinary life better— measurably, honestly and vis- ibly better. Four years in opposition taught me exactly what is wrong with the way this place is run; not from a distance, but from inside the room, asking the questions, reading the bills, watching ministers shrug. I know this life because I live it. My generation grew up watching Malta change at a speed that felt exciting at first and then started to feel like something else—like we were passengers, not citizens. Like the country was being built around us rather than for us. And this feeling is not unique to me. I hear it everywhere I go, from workers to young par- ents, from pensioners who built this country and feel it slipping away. What I am offering is not youth for its own sake. It is a differ- ent way of measuring success; not through GDP or cranes on the skyline. But whether your children's school has enough teachers. Whether your mother can see a specialist without pay- ing privately. Whether you and your partner can actually afford to build a life here, in the place you love, among the people you know. Six days from now, Malta votes. It's not a choice between red and blue—I mean that sin- cerely. The colours that matter are white and red—the colours of our flag, the ones that belong to all of us. This election is a choice be- tween a government that has run out of answers but refuses to admit it, and a generation that is ready to take responsi- bility. I am asking you to give me that responsibility. Not because I am perfect. Not because I have all the an- swers. But because I will show up every single day with the energy, honesty and determi- nation to live up to your trust. And because I have something no amount of political expe- rience can manufacture—I stayed. I believe in this place. And I am one of you. Nifs Ġdid. A Fresh Start. Mal- ta is ready for it and so am I. 4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 MAY 2026 OPINION Alex Borg I believe Malta can breathe again PN leader This election is a choice between a government that has run out of answers but refuses to admit it, and a generation that is ready to take responsibility