Politics is ultimately about people | Jonathan Shaw

In an election in which everyone seems keen on being the ‘underdog’, few can deny that the real underdogs 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 complete 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 wondered 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 question,” 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 instance. But I have always been pro-EU and I have been active in various projects that, though not really ‘political’ posts in themselves, are connected with public policy.”

Shaw’s involvement in public institutions to date includes an early stint with the Malta Film Commission (when this first started up in the 1990s) and the Aviation Advisory Committee. “So far I have been described 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 tourism and retail.”

Read the full interview in MaltaToday