Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/313770
X Europe 2014 IN an election in which everyone seems keen on being the 'under- dog', few can deny that the real un- derdogs are the relatively unknown candidates who have crawled out of the woodwork to contest for the first time. And there is no shortage of these, given that this – our third European election - has attracted the highest number of candidates so far. Jonathan Shaw may not be a com- plete stranger to many in Malta's business milieu but in politics, he may as well have just suddenly landed on a spaceship out of nowhere. I happen to be acquainted with him on a social level and, like many others, I won- dered at this sudden and unexpected move. So my first question when we meet for this interview – just 10 days before D-Day, as it were – practically asked itself. What on earth possessed you? "That is the million dollar ques- tion," he replies genially. "I get it from a lot of people. Truth is that I have been interested in politics for some time, but I was never active in the traditional sense of the word. I was never the type to be popping in and out of the Dar Centrali, for in- stance. But I have always been pro- EU and I have been active in various projects that, though not really 'po- litical' posts in themselves, are con- nected with public policy." Shaw's involvement in public in- stitutions to date includes an early stint with the Malta Film Commis- sion (when this first started up in the 1990s) and the Aviation Advisory Committee. "So far I have been de- scribed as a 'businessman' and it's true, but then again I am not exactly a capitalist who has built an empire, either. I am mostly associated with 'new business'- mainly online tour- ism and retail." Malta, he points out, has been suc- cessful in exploiting these 'new' nich- es, particularly in areas such as finan- cial services and i-gaming. Shaw puts this success down not only to the foresight of the previous administra- tion in creating the right conditions for these areas to flourish, but also to the energy of private enterprises, which identified opportunities and rose to the challenge. At the heart of this success story are ordinary people who bring in- novation to business models, and whose energy and creativity make things happen. "I believe politics, like business, is also ultimately about individual peo- ple. My experience has so far been primarily with the private sector, and as much as we say that government has an obligation to create jobs or to foster the right conditions for job creation, at the end of the day it is the private sector that ultimately has to bite the bullet and invest." The same, he argues, occurs at Eu- ropean level. "It is not strictly speak- ing the EU's competence to create jobs. The EU collates the best-prac- tice models from among its member states and translates them into direc- tives and standards. This is where we are heading, both locally and at EU level." It is up to individual member states to apply those standards, he con- tinues, and even then it is up to the By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 18 MAY 2014 PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD Politics is ultimat ely about people