With the environment hot on his mind, Pons stands for election

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 Friday, October 11, 2019 - 10:08

JC Pons, Independent Candidate, running for this year’s general election with the environment hot on his mind, has been speaking to PANORAMA.

Do you think you could tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

Yes, well my name is JC Pons, I’m 62 years old, I have two lovely daughters and my wife who supports me in my venture to do something for our future. My studies were in building construction, unfortunately worked in the concrete industry for many years when I was young and ignorant I suppose, but then I did a lot of work into sustainable architecture when I was travelling abroad, trying to learn from sustainable cultures and I came back to Gibraltar two years ago and that is when I started doing local issues a bit more in regards to the environment. 

What made you want to get into politics since you’ve been back?

I wouldn’t call it politics because I call it humanity. When I see my daughter and I take them to school and I see another hundreds of kids, lovely little angels, who need a future, a secure future and we hear all this horrible news of the climate chaos coming. It’s not politics it’s just, I felt I had to do the most I could in life, and I will do it, not like I am going to give up after these elections. The most I could do there and then now was politics. I tried to get the more well known environmentalists into it and I told them all that if they wouldn’t go I would go. That’s what drove me into politics.

What are your views international issues like Brexit?

It’s a very big problem, obviously we all know that global politics are volatile and totally unpredictable, everything is changing by the second and it’s going to be a problem for us locally but even if the worse situation happens, we’re not going to have hunger, we’re going to suffer a bit more maybe but compared to what climate chaos could do it’s like a game. Brexit could be bad but the Climate Chaos is definitely going to make it look insignificant.

What are your views on domestic issues like housing and transport for instance?

There are many issues and everybody has got a point of view. I find that the best solution is not dealing with the particular issues, its the way we deal with them and this is one of our manifesto points I’m promoting. We’ve got to get citizens involved in the decision making. We need assemblies where the citizens have places they can go to with no doors, with open doors where they can find out its information. Once people know what’s going on and be part of the solution, then everything will get solved.

If you get elected, what’s the first thing you would do?

The first thing I would do is give a big thanks to the young people, an apology to the young people as well for not having done enough sooner, but a call for everybody to participate. The first thing I would establish is to set up the ‘Climate Emergency Citizens Assembly’ which is what our friends in the coalition here are asking for. We need to get the citizens involved in everything, not to attack the government of the day, but to make us all responsible for it and get us all involved to the atmos, so, definitely getting this Assembly going, running with no closed doors will be my first thing because that would be the instrument for solving all our other issues. When we’re all together, together not divided.

11-10-2019 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR