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Simon Busuttil is Mr Nice Guy. He is one of the few people who matched his image perfectly all the time I have known him. If you really wanted to be nasty about him, the worst that you could say was that he was too perfect, a little prissy. Who would want to be nasty to a guy like that?
Until very recently he had it all going for him. He was genuinely liked by the vast majority of the PN majority. The PN grassroots were proud of him. I personally congratulated him for his performance on television just prior to the EU referendum when he fielded an amazing array of questions about EU membership. He was the head boy, the smartest kid at the prize day ceremony, the quiz wizard.
Having struggled for months to claim credibility as an authoritative purveyor of non-partisan information during the EU accession process, he has set some people’s teeth on edge by throwing his lot in with the PN. Still, he did not need to fear the loss of votes from sensitive people; there are many more who are insensitive to sharp moves. He certainly had no need to lead the attack against the Greens.
There are so many votes to be had from the partisans who don’t care about political correctness that the ones who do care about his volte face are expendable from his point of view. Labourites never believed him and his candidacy is a confirmation of their suspicions: no shock and hardly any disgust. He loses no votes from jaded antagonists.
At the top of the PN list on the ballot paper, he bags the nationwide harvest of those undiscriminating Nationalist voters who simply start at the top. Until a few days ago he was a sure winner. What was the need to open a smear campaign against the Greens? Two of his competitors for the PN vote suffer the same volte face handicap: Joanna Drake and David Casa were “strictly non-partisan” protagonists of the IVA Campaign. They fooled nobody then and hardly anybody is surprised now: the Machiavellians respect the ‘smart move,’ the politically correct have to shrug it all off.
Simon had nothing to fear from Michael Falzon who is the Debono Grech of the PN phalanx appealing to the PN Immortals. He has all the savvy and experience of a party that managed to lose close to Lm 100 million every year for the past 17 years. He wants to put his talent to work in Brussels. Not every political retireé can get to be President. Falzon gets the Tal-Maduma vote. A political fledgling like Simon must look elsewhere for his support.
Ian Spiteri Bailey could hardly have given Simon sleepless nights: the concoction of PN ersatz workerism of Spiteri Bailey’s speech at the PN General Council combined with the enthusiastic endorsement of the I.M.Beck lobby leaves him far behind Simon’s impeccable suavity. Simon has nothing to do with the Blue Jacket, Zepp il-Hafi PN version of the Aristocracy of the Workers.
What on earth possessed him to start all this nonsense about abortion? Who set him up? It seems so extravagantly suicidal for God’s favourite altar boy to display a shocking mean streak at the start of his very first election campaign. He could not possibly have done anything so stupid all on his own.
He must have had the help of a PN mastermind. Listening to the speeches by the PN candidates at the PN General Council broadcast ad nauseam on Net TV, I could not help but notice that the candidates’ speeches lacked any overlap at all, no repetition: each had a specific target audience. The choreography was excellent. I loved the workerism in the tail end speech: all it lacked was a singlet and tattoos. And in all such delightful contrast to the appeals to feminists, environmentalists, the God fearing, the intellectuals, the oligarchs and the party, party, party people, that had come in rapid and unselfconscious succession a few minutes before.
The party for everyone covered all the bases: from millionaires to the destitute, bigots to libertines, from affluent or hungry materialists to those who value ideas above all else. It seemed no accident that Tonio Fenech and Simon Busutttil broke the poison phial of abortion in their speeches there. Whose decision was it that it was time to launch the anti-Green smear campaign? Who was the casting director? I will never believe that Simon alone is responsible.
He is probably guilty most of all of being gullible. He probably held his nose and did his duty to the party as assigned. He is not a party man but he was far too keen to show that he was True Blue by drawing first blood. He is a complete beginner in big party nastiness. He still has not figured out that the people to watch out for in a megaparty are one’s friends: one’s political rivals declare themselves with the correctness of duelists by comparison. The friends slit your throat in the dark. And you are expected not to be a baby about it.
Simon’s mudslinging debut is not his greatest fault at this point. In fifteen years in the trenches against two massive propaganda machines, I have known worse. His major defect now appears to be his lack of political insight: if he is so easily tripped up by the PN apparatchiks, what use can we make of him as one of Malta’s representatives in Brussels? He should have stayed away from politics if he is a natural born tool of the first available bureaucracy, this time the PN party machine.
I was also disappointed at his panic under fire when we sued him. He would not stand a day with the Greens. If it really is too hot for him in this kitchen, he should get out. There were times when the blizzard of libels buffeting me as editor of the Alternattiva newspaper meant that I had Lm20,000 worth of fines dangling over my head at any given time. I did not have 20,000 cents to my name at the time and no endless party funds to provide a safety-net. We held the record for most sued newspaper and also had the highest libel suit success rate. Most of them came from PN prima donnas. They could not shut us up whatever they did. We never winced.
The lawsuits we lost, we actually won. It is scandalous that we were required to pay Dr Louis Galea Lm 700 for saying that whatever it was he had built as a part-time farmer in Fawwara was a villa. The court thought it was not big enough to deserve our description. What would the damages have been if, to scrape a few more votes in an election, we had maliciously accused them of consorting with abortionists?
Regardless of experiencing the law as a means of oppression for many years, I have never been provoked into suing anybody for libel before. I can never indulge in the political terrorism that constantly threatens Maltese journalists. Having dabbled with journalism for many years, I have not wanted to be on the side of the oppressors. Suing Simon & Co was done with much regret and I hope that I will be able to say for many years to come that the only people I have ever sued for libel were Simon & Co. Dr Busuttil’s whining about it does not add to my respect for him.
However, I can undertake as of now to second his plea for clemency should the court find him guilty as charged. We have not sued him for damages and any fine he does pay will go to the public coffers to help with the country’s deficit problems.
His obsessive fear of being the first politician ever to be jailed for libel is very, very unrealistic. Nobody has ever been jailed for libel. Only Green politicians get arrested or jailed under a PN regime. Besides, it was his party that made the law, not Alternattiva Demokratika. All we want is a declaration of guilt or an apology.
If he refuses to apologise in time and is eventually fined for his persistence, I would argue in his defence that it is his PN speech tutor who should pay the fine. It is already unfair to him that he has been so badly charred on the altar of Lawrence Gonzi’s elevation to Nationalist divinity status. He should not also have to pay for his own political funeral.
Still, he has lost any remnant of my vote irretrievably.
Dr Vassallo is Chairperson of
Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party
www.arnoldcassola.com
harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt
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