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Reading through contemporary history one cannot hope noticing the transformation of people from left to right, from liberal to conservative, from atheistic to overly religious, and vice-versa of course.
To change is a must. But changing completely is only dysfunctional opportunism and we all suffer from that at some time or other. Yet, I still find it difficult to stomach convenient memory loss.
So, listening to the two leaders of the larger political parties this week or rather reading their speeches on the internet, I could not help telling myself; ‘Not again.’
Alfred Sant has said for the umpteenth time that a Labour party in government will do this and that. And it sounds so surreal. Here is a man who has lost two elections, in 1998 and 2003 and a national referendum. He believes that he has won the European elections, and is hoping that simply because the Nationalists are so hopeless he will be returned to the polls.
He cannot and he must not talk of what a Labour government will do, for it is still too early.
The ugly thing about politics is that it has a lot to do with winning and losing and very little to do with governance.
Which brings me to the Fossos speech for the Mini-mass meeting held by Lawrence Gonzi. He talked about consensus.
The health sector was one subject that came up for scrutiny in a speech that was all for exhuming the great Nationalist past.
But for heaven’s sake, the biggest problem in the health sector is that the Labour party had been far too soft with the PN on the mother of all white elephants – the Mater Dei hospital.
Instead of hitting out at the PN that the project was misconstrued from day one and that we as a nation cannot sustain such a huge health bill, the Labour party gets strangled in endless debates on designs, designers and who did what.
Then Dr Gonzi talked of the environment, and in the typical 1950’s understanding of the environment it was about cleanliness. And here he made another cat call for consensus.
But who in the seven heavens is objecting to enforcement of the many existent rules and regulations and by-laws that exist? And why should we talk about new laws, when the old laws have never been implemented?
It was this government, was it not who opted for using wardens for a Jihad on parking offences but not on littering?
Who has watched over the increase – tenfold I would imagine – in consumer oriented waste and acted on Maghtab only when it was Europe that opened its mouth?
What we do not need in this Singaporean styled zealot cleanliness offensive is consensus. Ask the Lee family in Singapore. But God forbid we turn ourselves into a boring resemblance of Singapore.
Okay, Dr Gonzi, let us look at some of the issues that both Parties share a similar outlook, simply because it is convenient – for electoral reasons.
The first thing that comes to mind, are the national holidays. There are five national holidays and yet both Dr Gonzi and Dr Sant have never once got together or thought of getting together to come up with one national holiday that brings all the Maltese together. It would also save our business communities valuable time and bring back some oomph to our enterprise.
The second issue is the rent laws. Both leaders lament about the depleting countryside, but both are aware that the only way to redirect the building industry away from new zones is to refocus on reconstructing ‘old’ accommodation.
But this can only happen if the rent laws are revamped releasing thousands of buildings onto the market for renting purposes.
The other major issue is the question of political patronage. Here again, both men can sit together and agree to do away with the American system of political appointees. It would be a major start to a new era where politics takes a back burner role and where meritocracy replaces mediocrity and nepotism.
The final thing would be about making government, including parliament, smaller.
Go tell that to RCC and see what his answer will be.
Unfortunate for us and for them, both Alfred and Lawrence are entrapped in an invisible cage determined by the Party apparatchiks.
Yet, there is hope that both will find the courage to be leaders and do the things, that their advisors and political leeches urge them not to do.
For our sins for being Islanders we are meant to suffer insularity. This European Union thing may not change things as fast as we would have imagined. The infatuation with everything Brussels is also making it worse.
We badly need to look beyond, but as long as we remain Islanders we have little choice.
But it is not bad all news. If we were a larger blot on the map we would realise how distant government is from the people. This way proximity is a guarantee of insularity.
Where do you see the Prime Minister driving his car staring at bus drivers to see if their uniforms are according to the regulations? The same holds for all our eminent politicos.
And though we are eternal grumblers; kill more birds per capita than anyone else; have the lowest tax and social security contributions in Europe; people do sometimes listen to us most especially at election time. Then, in a very peculiar way, all our politicos do, is promise us the world.
It should be different, but then we are not that different from others, we are simply a little bit wilder, less disciplined and Latin.
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