Everyone loves democracy. It oozes out in beads of sweat from the foreheads of the lost generation of the 1980s, when democracy was truly at stake. So why do we turn the clock back?
Josie Muscat and his dust-mongering sidekick Anglu Xuereb are dough-faced, self-declared enemies of single mothers and asylum seekers who are providing safe harbour for fascists and racists and people stuck in the horrible empty past of a small island. And because Muscat is a dead ringer for Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, I am afraid Azzjoni Nazzjonali are going to be taking precious votes away from the Nationalist party in the coming election from throwbacks and nostalgics, and of course, fascists and racists.
Try hard as I could, it was a feat having to watch Josie and Anglu on the Broadcasting Authority electoral programmes, because their faces were actually stinking right off the TV screen.
They are a despicable tag-team of rich entrepreneurs who are dead set on throwing muck-filled suspicion upon every single human being who doesn’t conform to their way of thinking, or their lifestyle: they hate single mothers, they hate the victims of drugs, they hate asylum seekers – as Anglu Xuereb’s disgusting billboard in Balzan promising the closure of a progressive open centre shows. So much for the benevolence of his AX Foundation – it isn’t worth the spittle on the muck of the shoes of peace-loving citizens, and Mgr Victor Zammit McKeon amply showed us the value of the real morality this society needs: tolerance.
The AN manifesto is clear: among the “normal members of society” forced upon society through “the satisfaction of individual choices” are drug addicts, single parents, and broken families. Chapter Five states that “a society where more children are brought up by one parent, because the state subsidises the choice of being a single parent, creates a generation of irresponsible young parents… where cohabitation has become a popular choice; where multiculturalism has divided society in different sections and ethnic groups, living without any communication between them. These conditions have created violent gangs of youths, denied of their parents’ love and a stable family, who find an alternative family in criminal associations…”
Get the logic: social benefits to single parents contribute to crime and multicultural breakdown. Why aren’t the alarm bells ringing?
From shock to disgust, to sober reflection: this week’s turncoat, the former AD councillor Rene Rossignaud, repelled me for his unabashed display of disturbed logic. I’ll be straight. AD should have known better than to turn up with candidates it cannot depend upon, or who do not appreciate the role of a political party in an election, i.e. get votes. You can’t lose sight on your councillors, to suddenly realise they are happily resigning of the eve of an election. Turncoats and political nobodies are part and parcel of elections. Averting these pitfalls are important during elections.
And yet, the stench of disloyalty disturbed me. I’d hope that even the most vehement of internal dissidents with a modicum of moral fibre would choose to limit the damage to their party, unless there is a serious flaw in party policy.
But in Rossignaud’s resignation all I see is a prime example of serfdom, a tag which leaves him searching for self-respect for yet more time to come. Even more disturbing was the fact that the Nationalist media was allowed to clinch the exclusive on Rossignaud’s resignation. Undoubtedly the timing of his resignation was such that it would inflict as much damage as possible to AD.
Rossignaud resigned because, he claimed, AD was “only interested in obtaining some form of power at all costs” – something which, last time I checked, was the point of having a political party. Indeed, isn’t the foundation of any party strategy the fight to garner as many votes from the willing electorate as possible?
But even more stupidly, he says AD’s quest would bring about serious consequences, the likes of attracting such number of PN votes that could mean they are not returned to power, and replaced by Labour, which he wrongfully accuses of wanting “to separate Malta from the Europe AD believes in so much” – something which Labour has denied outright.
So Rossignaud resigns because voters are not choosing the Nationalist party. He resigns because he is a political serf, unable to understand the basic principle of party strategy: vote-catching. Whether the big PN machine is at work or not here, Rossignaud is the sad, albeit willing, casualty of the game wielded by media pundits and their political masters.
Indeed, the very style of his resignation letter perfectly echoed the sort of apocalyptic millenarianism all the PN spinners and their army of psychotic columnists have been warning anyone seriously toying with that very democratic birthright of theirs: voting for who the hell they want to.
For democracy is a game that stops at the MLPN, right? The Sunday Times’ editor for example, advanced the most rickety of theses last week in ruling out coalitions as a recipe for disaster using the lazy example of the Italian crisis: a crisis informed by the electoral reforms devised by Berlusconi which brought about the speedy end of Prodi’s tenuous government. Steve Mallia’s insight into coalitions stopped there – ignoring the very European reality that 22 EU governments today are formed by coalitions of different parties.
The biggest insult to the Maltese voter is the electoral cartel formed by the two major parties, an outright denial of true representative democracy. By refusing to create a minimum national threshold – a ceiling that third parties must reach nationally to be awarded a seat in parliament – third party voters must be sufficient enough to reach the 16% threshold in one district.
It is a high threshold to reach. But why should people not be allowed the right to have their votes recognised by a system that grants parliamentary seats in proportion to the number of votes garnered nationally – and not just confined to the parochial limits of the district? Why do the PN and MLP deny the people the fullness of their vote?
That alas, is not our reality.
Our reality is Pablo Micallef. Our reality is Eileen Montesin. It’s Claudette Pace. Our reality is former Labour cheerleaders, daytime TV personalities and Where’s Everybody quizmasters who have become the new moderators of the prima serata political debate for Lawrence Gonzi.
In their new vestiges as luminaries performing their intercession for the TV public, Pablo, Eileen and Claudette pervert the function of political debate by doing the only thing they know best. Act. Smile. Chirp. Twitter. Chirrup. Bounce. They are the mawkish big-breasted retailers of fiction, of brainless Endemol game show bollocks, of gormless soap opera idiocy, of cheap afternoon tittle-tattle and cookery from their little studios.
They sell GonziPN the way they sell detergents for the sponsors of their cheap shows.
They want to sell you the comfort of never having to think for yourselves again.
All the happiness that Daphne Caruana Galizia witnesses in the audiences who listen in to Gonzi’s Taht it-Tinda cabaret will be reflected off the polished floors at the shopping malls when the tax cuts for the island’s highest earners roll in. It will all be over by the 8 March and you can return to watch Deal Or No Deal, Dejjem Tieghek Becky and Sellili, and you will never have to worry again for the next five years.
In the meantime, everyone’s as sick as a horse. Daphne battles “idealism” with electoral hysteria, taking on the blogosphere and doing the email rounds, denigrating those who want to reserve their right to vote in peace, for whoever they wish, as idiots or people “who should grow up”. She is just another Jo Said on newsprint.
Why… only some time ago it was the very fascist threat of the lobotomised loonies and women-haters in Josie Muscat’s and Anglu Xuereb’s far-right Azzjoni Nazzjonali that represented the greatest threat to democracy for Daphne. Now she uses fascism as an argument against multi-party democracy. Instead of hitting right at the heart of the fascist loudspeakers who attract voters from the likes of those who had put her family’s lives in danger, she takes on the voters who believe in the true essence of the fight of the 80s – democracy.
Yes, they shed blood in the 1980s. Now they are urinating it by the bucketful.
