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This week, confronted with two PN bigwigs who represent, shall I say, the ‘real’ Nationalist party I was taken to task over my lack or absent support for the PN. Both could not fathom why I hit out at the inconsistencies and sloppiness of the Nationalist government. They expected, did they not, that I wrap myself in the maduma banner and sing the praises to a political party that is becoming increasingly like Fanfani’s Democrazia Cristiana in the turbulent seventies.
Conveniently they forget that for years I had metaphorically bludgeoned Alfred Sant and his party and gone on record to state that one should vote for the PN to get into Europe. That appears not to be sufficient. What the Nationalists expect from all of us is to do a full scale lobotomy.
Endorsing a Nationalist candidate is also to be encouraged or at least should pose no problem, as Daphne or Marisa ML or I.M Beck aka Andrew Borg Cardona have, in their wisdom, chosen to do.
It is fine to be a Nationalist, but by their creed you cannot be anything else. And this is no joke. When I left Alternattiva in 1996, my first job was as deputy editor with The Independent. I recall the first meeting with one of the directors of that newspaper, a certain Joe Said, a man who does not like to be in the news, but loves to create events for the news.
He scribbled a note and his inimitable gruff style shoved it to me and asked me to sign it. The note read that I should throw away all my political baggage before joining. That letter was unnecessary but I have not forgotten it. I try to promise myself that I will not do the same to any of the newsroom staff at MaltaToday. Today, I am not a member of any party, but I have the right to speak my mind and to express what my readers feel.
The establishment conveniently renders unemployable anyone with a high profile in any of the two opposition parties, hence the large number of doctors, lawyer, self-employed in the higher ranks of the opposition. There can be no career if you happen to have a political angle other than Nationalist. And yes, it is that bad.
This is no exaggeration.
There is this arrogance in the real Nationalist party that is not only unbearable, but dangerous.
It exemplifies itself perhaps in the greatest of forms in Joe Saliba. A man who was never a Nationalist but became one by chance. I remember him in the early days of Alternattiva serving as Wenzu Mintoff’s self styled bodyguard. Joe was then a builder and together with another tough looking guy Saliba was an asset in parliament in the days when Wenzu Mintoff was seen as a traitor by his then former party.
Joe Saliba reminds me of the Janissaries, those Christian slaves that turned to Islam and turned out to become the most uncomprising, unforgiving and intolerant of warriors.
In their quest to win and to win all, the Nationalist control room has unleashed a doctrine of us or them. Even the staff at stamperija has ended up suffering from this cult.
It is sad. Today, the middle of the road folk do not give a toss about party affiliation, but about right and wrong, good and bad and sensible and stupid.
And since we are on the question of insensitivity, one has to think of Tonio Borg. The Home affairs minister is someone who cannot come to terms with his grave misjudgements.
The Times are to be commended on unearthing the ugly story of the Eritreans that were repatriated by the Maltese authorities only to be tortured.
The Nationalist guys who scolded and labelled me nasty for having an uncensored pen, have no words for a weak deputy Prime Minister who did not have the decency to stop and react to the Eritrean story until all hell broke loose.
Neither did he see the urgency when it came to other serious matters.* And yes, from a man who pumps air into the balloon called morality and solidarity, I would expect nothing other than a change of tack or better still a chance to understand that ministerial posts and deputy Prime Ministers are for men not mice.
• serious matters: the prolonged detention of foreign nationals, the repatriation of illegal immigrants, the Police commissioner saga, the case of the bribed judges
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