Word of advice for all parties involved in this grossly unmemorable election campaign. Take a leaf out of Hillary’s book and sack your campaign managers… NOW!
OK, let’s start with the Nationalists: a reasonable place to start, considering that they evidently think of themselves as the beginning and end of all things anyway.
The trouble with the PN – sorry, the GonziPN – is that it doesn’t have a campaign manager to sack in the first place. Instead, it has an “image and campaign consultant”… which is Gonzispeak for “Sarkozy’s personal plagiarist”.
Yes, indeed. Stuck for a good, catchy little campaign slogan? Well, don’t bother thinking up one of your own: all you need to do is simply run a search on Google, and Mon Dieu! Voici un slogan que fait pour nous! Et regardez ces champs verdes, et cet ciel bleu…!
But this is all vieux châpeau. Never mind that GonziPN’s “image and campaign consultant” is actually the Nationalist equivalent of Arsenio Lupin III (only without the nifty red suit, the vintage 1932 Morgan, and the eternal crush on Margot); never mind that he/she has now been caught with his or her pants down STEALING other people’s property (plagiarism, by the way, is theft by another name). For the real problem is not that GonziPN’s campaign manager is a sneaky little thief; it’s that he or she is not very good at thievery to begin with.
Look: if you’re going to steal something from Sarkozy, why on earth settle for a miserable little billboard and a meaningless little slogan? If you’re going to risk getting caught and publicly humiliated, why not make the risk worthwhile by nabbing something like… um… Carla Bruni? Or even better, the French President’s entire approach to national rapprochement and integration (appointing two North African immigrants to his Cabinet, among other noteworthy initiatives)?
But then, there are a few advantages to theft. For let’s face it: if they don’t rip off other people’s good ideas, they will have little option but to come up with crap ideas of their own. And that is where the real trouble begins.
Consider their latest slogan: “Biex nibqghu nghixu ahjar”… or, as Sarkozy would put it if he returned the favour and simply swiped GonziPN’s electoral billboard for himself: “Pour continuer vivre… mieux.”
Quoi? Pardonnez-moi? “To carry on living… better”? Au contraire, mon frére, but it just doesn’t work comme-ça. The only way you can really “carry on” living is the way you were living before. Otherwise, you will cease to “continuer”, and will instead begin to “changer” into “autre chose”. Capish?
Sure you do. But like so many electoral cock-ups, this one is intensely revealing about the GonziPN’s most secret concern: how to project two perfectly conflicting messages at one and the same time.
The first of these messages is “continuity”. This is important for the Nationalists, as stability is undeniably their leader’s greatest asset. They are therefore understandably keen to project the image of a “safe hands Lawrence” – the political equivalent of a Fairy Godfather, whose existence alone keeps everything ticking over smoothly without too much fuss or pain.
But there is a snag. No matter how safe and snug the concept of stability makes us feel, it is an undeniable fact that it also breeds ennui. People, unreasonable sods that they are, tend to get bored of too much tranquillity and comfort. Never mind how much you do for them, never mind how much of their own money you spend trying to desperately buy their votes back before the election… the ungrateful so-and-so’s will sooner or later start hankering after “change”. Hence the Labour Party’s somewhat tired slogan, “New Year, New Beginning.” (Yeah… pity about the same old party, though.) And hence also the need for the PN to counterbalance this by somehow also incorporating the dynamic of change in their billboard somewhere.
The result? Arguably the crappiest and most uninspiring electoral slogan since “Inizzjattiva w Wens”. But it simply pales into insignificance compared to what the Sarkozy plagiarists did next.
Have you seen the new “Silence of the Environmentalists” campaign billboard? I have, and… what in the name of François Mitterand could they possibly have been thinking?
Let’s see now. A little girl with her mouth covered by a sunflower. If a picture speaks a thousand words, this one is yelling one, single inescapable message: “Faith in the people? Sure we have faith in the people… so long as they keep their TRAPS SHUT!” Or how about this for a slogan? “You can look, you can admire, but don’t you DARE complain…”
Ah, but please note also the extreme subtlety with which the GonziPN’s velvet glove effect has been subliminally illustrated. For what better way to shut someone up, then to gag them with… a flower?
That’s right, folks. Like all daft electoral strategies, this one also reveals the true spirit of things at the Stamperija these days. Unlike the detested “Tal-Lejber”, who used to send out their thugs to bite off people’s ears and noses, the glorious GonziPN has an altogether more palatable way of curtailing individual freedoms. Gone are the rubber bullets and the North Korean-trained riot police…. nowadays, they first try and buy your silence with favours and “pampalunati”; and when this fails, they will find some perfectly legal way to get their own way and deprive you of yours (which, let’s face it, is not exactly difficult when you also occupy all of the government benches in Parliament, bar none.)
But there the difference ends: for be it with flowers or with the threat of physical violence, you will end up silenced one way or another. If you don’t believe me, check out the latest electoral updates on www.di-ve.com.
Anyone for a plié?
OK, now for the token “balance” part, where I pick on Labour just so that the Nationalists, poor little things, don’t get all upset.
Until recently, I was beginning to worry that the Labour Party would never actually get their campaign off the ground. But to my inestimable relief, it seems they have finally hit the campaign trail. Too little, too late? Possibly. But so far, their electoral imagery simply takes one’s breath away… and doesn’t give it back.
A New Year, A New Beginning and… a New Ballerina?
Hmm. OK, I know that Labour has been making a song and dance about corruption for ages now, but… what exactly are we to understand with this latest imagery from the party that gave us “Suldati Tal-Azzar” and “L-Aristokrazija Tal-Haddiem”? We all know that “change” is an integral part of the MLP’s entire strategy. But do they really expect us to believe that Laburisti have metamorphosed into a bunch of little girls gearing up for their weekly ballet lessons? I don’t know, I just don’t see it myself.
Hang on. Maybe it’s not that way at all. Maybe it’s just that, instead of U-Turns, Alfred Sant will now be performing pirouettes. Of course! I can see it all now. Labour’s Plan for a New Battement Sour Le Cou-De-Pies: opening with a delightful little number called the “Natalino-Cracker Suite”, in which the parliamentary secretary for PBS (Pretty Ballet Shoes) waltzes onto the stage with her typical pachydermatous grace, and defeats the evil news choreographer Natalino Fenech and his Nationalist henchmen with a daring triple twirl (I believe the precise ballet term for this difficult step is “jeté battu”: i.e., “beaten up and thrown off stage”.)
After an interlude, the curtains rise for a performance of “The Rites of Spring (Hunting)”: a divertissement in which the Labour Party’s Deputy Leotard, Michael Falzon, diverts the attention of a troupe of dancing kaccaturi, sending them all spinning off into the sunset on the promise of a whole new spring hunting season. (Note: This particular number is full of pliés, in which the truth about Malta’s obligations as an EU member State is regularly twisted and bent beyond recognition.)
Oh, and of course there is the grand finale: “Sant Lake”, in which the newly sworn in Prime Minister suddenly realises that none of his pre-electoral pledges were actually feasible, and starts to sink into a quagmire of his own making.
But by this time the audience would already be queuing up outside the box office to demand their money back. And who can blame them?
After all, they had all bought tickets to a soap opera, and have no time to put up with a piece of Classical Bull.
