Malta's Swede politician promises to remain among the people

“All politicians are of the people, but I will remain among the people,” says Camilla Appelgren, making her pitch to a question about what makes her different from other politicians contesting the European Parliament elections this May. “That’s how you can be a leader, when you fight with the people – it’s who I am as a person, who I will be as a politician.” There’s much else that is different about the 34-year-old Swede who is standing for the Democratic Party. She points out that her relocation to Malta eight years ago “was very natural” and that Malta is a place “where I felt at home as much as I felt at home in Sweden”.  Her private and public personas are different in other ways too, so is her style of campaigning. She will not be posting out flyers, nor doing any home visits. “My campaign will be what I am,” she says pointedly. “I will do what I have been doing all along: organising clean-ups and being out there.” Ms Appelgren first came to Malta in 1999 to study English, and she became enamoured of the island and her host family – “an amazing family who became like a second family”. Afterwards she took to visiting Malta every summer for several weeks. “In a way I see...