I guess it takes more than an invitation to dinner to get to like a person. And then there are those characters who, no matter what happens, can never kind of appreciate each other.
Two people who cannot stand each other and yet are more similar to one another than anyone I can think of, are Alfred and Dom. The former has every intention of repeating what Dom did in 1971 and elect himself as PM at practically the same age Dom became Premier in the early seventies.
Similarly to Dom, Sant has had to wait in the opposition benches for a very long time after a short span in government. And like Dom back in the 1950s, Alfred had this crazy idea for a Switzerland in the Med – Dom had wanted integration with Britain.
Dom and Alfred are both socialists, at least that is what they say they are or want to be. Yet the former is obsessed with his personal monetary assets and property, while the latter is allergic to plebs and proles. Both are non-religious, probably atheists and naturally secular.
Dom and Alfred may not like each other, but both have the habit of rubbishing their immediate entourage, labelling them, and offending them with little consideration for the hard work they put into the party. And both consider the people around them expendable.
Though Dom was by far the superior orator and made oratory his prime weapon, Alfred has taken the Dom approach to attacking or demeaning adversaries and targets by repeating, repeating and repeating.
In 1971, Dom launched the mother of all battles, by taking head-on all the sleaze that festered in the tired and over-cautious Borg Olivier camp; in 2007, Sant uses the same style in emphasising corruption in the indecisive Gonzi administration. It looks like history repeating all again.
Dom’s speech would start off at a tangent, suddenly reaching a climax with a rabble-rousing palaver that only an orator of his calibre could muster.
Alfred attempts to do the same; in his parliamentary speech last Wednesday he went off into a long argument about Ranier Fsadni’s critique of his politics. The argumentation was irrelevant, but he made up for his philosophical treatise in his winding up. And it is in his winding up that I understood once again why so many people who were once close to Alfred Sant, are now so distant – if not completely antagonistic to the man.
Copying the style of Dom who excelled in displaying his distaste for certain people by demeaning them and mixing up names as if in a fuddle, Alfred turned to the programme Reporter which I host on TVM, to point out Joe Saliba’s incredible gaffe where the PN secretary-general stated ‘erroneously’ on the programme that John Dalli had resigned because of a criminal investigation by the Commissioner of Police.
Needless to say, Alfred Sant questioned whether this was after all ‘erroneous’.
But Alfred proceeded to refer to the programme, which is when he came to refer to me that he said, “…and that one, what’s his name? What’s his name… Stephen… Stephen Balzan”, only to be prompted by others who typically are expected to fall in and come to his rescue when words fail him, that the enigmatic presenter was indeed none other than yours truly, Saviour Balzan.
Now this is not fuddling or amnesia or bad memory, but Alfred’s way of saying, ‘hey man… I think you’re not worth the dust on my party policies’.
In the 20 years, I have interviewed Sant some ten times, confronted him on TV about fifteen, had dinner with him three times, referred to him in my articles about 3,000 times and met him about 25 times. Every single time, I wore the same, scruffy, blue-shirt-and-black-suit dress code, and an unkempt beard. On this little island of ours, even though I have not yet done the Full Monty outside the Archbishop’s Curia, I am pretty well known to everyone, and everywhere I go, everyone knows me as Saviour.
And yet Alfred, or is it Freddie, Frederick… it gets so confusing when his name is mentioned every day… should be forgiven for playing scrabble with my name.
But I would suggest that he acts his age. If this man thinks I am the ass who wants to block his pseudo-socialist renaissance, he had better ignore me. Alfred, if you are going to mention me, could you please get my presumptuous name right, and if you think I am a twit, just say it. Don’t worry, I can really take the flak.
Alfred really believes this newspaper and the sister newspapers are all out to get him. He cannot and will not fathom, that this is an independent media house and no one pulls the strings here. I have no intention of trying to convince him that we have no agenda.
But if he wants to believe that we have an agenda, he can join forces with Lawrence, Harry and Josie and commiserate together with them.
I, on the other hand, have given up on most politicians. For it does not stop here. I know from contacts that he downplays the influence of MaltaToday.
I could have told him that if we were so bloody insignificant, than why does he have to worry about us?
Since I last met Alfred Sant, Illum, the Maltese-language Sunday, has also been a source of ridicule for Freddie and his acolytes. At least that is what I am informed. They are unaware of how Illum has grown, filling the much needed void of an independent Maltese-language newspaper.
But they are surely aware that Illum has eaten away at the parochial Kullhadd, the waning It-Torca and the partisan il-Mument, and that by election time I have no doubt in my mind that it will the first Maltese-language paper to be read before anything else.
Alfred is someone I have tried to understand. I listen to what he has to say and I dissect his words. He does say some sensible things, but at other times he plays with words. He comes out as a person with a very determined mission, but as he moves along he reveals his biggest drawback.
Like an exocet missile fixed on a specific target, he doesn’t know how to swerve when faced with the sudden emergence of a mountain. In reality he is a train: once derailed he cannot get back on track.
But he is definitely the survivor – 14 years as opposition leader is no joke. And a success story by all means. His credentials as the darling of the socialist party are difficult to understand. More so considering his revulsion for Maltese traditions and working class fetishes.
But most Maltese politicians are experts in the art of survival. And surviving has nothing to do with being good at other things. If elected PM, he will make it a point to hold on to power for the next ten years. Very much as Dom did. And that is to be expected.
It will be an exciting time for the print media. If I am still around I propose that Fred, Freddie, Alfie or is it Alfred… memorises my name and repeats Saviour, Saviour, Saviour 365 times.
He will need to as well, because every morning when he drives to Castille he will be leafing frantically through Illum or MaltaToday to see what Stephen… Saviour is up to. By that time he would have to face up to a daily newspaper, not only two Sundays.