|
Joe Vella came up to me with a soft drink in his hand.
Joe Vella is a fellow I metaphorically bludgeoned because of his time as the editor of the Malta News, a now defunct Saturday newspaper that at the time portrayed the days of the Mintoffian government as a naughty but exciting holiday in the Bahamas.
On a personal level Joe Vella is an okay sort of guy, soft spoken and humble. So please take these comments as my sort of good deed of the year.
Yet what was more interesting was his inquisitive query.
“How was your meeting with the Prime Minister before the budget?”
“What meeting?” I asked.
“The meeting with the English language newspaper editors.”
“Oh, I had no such meeting,” I replied brusquely, realising that I had been missing something.
Then it dawned on me why an independent smashing English daily newspaper had carried exclusive Pulitzer Prize winning news material about what to expect in the budget.
The other editors, sipping drinks courtesy of a mobile company celebrating Christmas, kept a straight face and then conveniently disappeared.
On the day of the budget that silly, inconsequential press club that calls itself an Institute issued a press release rapping Dr Gonzi for not providing the press with an English version of the Budget.
Instead of wasting time on such insipid press releases, the Press Club, or Institute, could use up some of its time to complain why media such as NET TV and Nazzjon had a preview copy of the budget on a CD before the whole nation and everyone else.
Just in case they have not noticed, this has been happening for 17 sordid years.
I have no hang ups about not being in the Peppi-nata group of privileged editors, but this just goes to show the paranoia residing at Castille. A year and a half ago it was sure cool having a coffee with RCC in a hotel lobby, and paying for it. Now I am the boogie man.
This is surely the result of a consideration fuelled by the Pieta boys who think that the real opposition is not Dr Devaluation from Mile End, but MaltaToday.
MaltaToday finally did get an interview with the PM on Friday.
Dr Gonzi is a born politician. He can laugh off a question and, better still, smile endlessly when he unconvincingly replies to a complex question.
His revelation that he had planned to be PM as well as Finance Minister before taking the hot seat comes as a complete surprise.
My impression, and I do not think that I am wrong on this one, is that Gonzi was still hoping the former finance minister would hang on to his post.
There are two other items in the PM’s interview that strike me as worrying.
The first is his admission that there are more people suffering from poverty in Malta than ever before.
The second is his acceptance that a large chunk of the middle class has abandoned the Nationalist party.
He should start worrying if he really believes that these two statements are true.
This is a country badly in need of a soul.
Public broadcasting, which, according to the gurus at PBS, has improved, did not even have one discussion programme on the budget this week other than the traditional tit for tat debate hosted by veteran TV journalist Reno Bugeja.
The PM and his advisors should be applauded for all their spinning before the budget. It was a job well done and it surely could not have been the work of his communication co-ordinator or the boys at Pieta.
It had to have been someone else, someone with the media savvy and supreme belief that part of himself resides within the Prime Minister. A priest-like media figure perhaps.
The PM hopes to create enough impetus for economic revival in 2005.
But this is not very likely.
With less money in hand, with higher unemployment, with less consumer confidence and with a not very bright future in Europe in 2005, I cannot see how we can be more productive in little Malta.
The sad thing is that at the moment there does not seem to be anyone in the political world to serve as an alternative to Gonzi.
I mean, this talk of devaluation by Alfred Sant makes it worse, not better. Someone, and it should not be his discontented deputy Dr Michael Falzon, should be telling Sant to bring this talk of devaluation to a grinding halt.
Which brings me back to the media, the opposition and the ghost busters.
While everyone is concerned about increased electricity bills and the quality of life, public broadcasting, under the new chairmanship of a 30-year-old chicken drumstick manager with a goatee, is dedicating TV prime time to the realm of ghosts.
In the media we call it ‘alienation’.
The spin doctors call it ‘leave it to me, I’ll do the shafting’.
It would be okay if it was a Joe Grima programme on NET. I mean, it is perfectly acceptable if on one of Malta’s political stations an experienced broadcaster chooses to discuss the budget with Peppi, Pierre Portelli and Jesmond Bonello.
All these individuals are well known Gonzi aficionados, but even though Grande Fratello is a much better watch, never mind because at the end of the day NET TV is a party station with a declared bias.
With PBS it is a different story.
This is public broadcasting under a commitment to serve the public with intelligent debates.
Which is why this country was regaled with stories about ghosts on Friday evening and other unbelievably tiresome and asinine populist talk shows watched by people who do not have enough extra cash to buy a satellite dish and watch the real stuff.
|
