n the light of this weeks’ big news story, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to publish an abridged version of an article I had written for the ‘j’accuse’ blog at the height of last year’s hysterical election campaign. Many people seem to be genuinely surprised – shocked even – by Marisa Micallef’s’ defection from Blue to Red. Quite frankly, they shouldn’t be. While this latest development does have a surreal flavour to it (largely due to the language employed by the former The Independent columnist), in many ways it was bound to happen. Rather than something unthinkable, the move should be seen as the logical climax of a system gone horribly wrong. Just consider this: if disappointed, formerly vociferous blues are desperately looking for a new political platform from where to ‘build a just society’, would they ever choose those losers at Alternattiva? You’ve gotta be kidding! Quite tragically, the pragmatists won’t even spare us the moralising spiel. And to be quite frank, that’s what really gets to me.
The original article was called Status Quo but the title of Woody Allen’s latest movie seems appropriate. Go and watch it, you’ll see what I mean.
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Some prefer GonziPN, others prefer Viva l-Lejber. A few of us dream of belonging to a more decent society.
There is one thing that the scaremongers and ‘skwadristi’ conveniently forget to mention when they embark on their vigilante tactics. And that one thing is that more or less half their fellow voters will put a nice big No. 1 next to whichever of Sant’s merry band of door-to-door salesmen happens to tickle their fancy.
Now there was a point in time (throughout the KMB glory years) when one was led to believe that the expression ‘marmalja Laburista’ was a pretty accurate description of reality. A regime which ransacked people’s homes, burnt down a newspaper’s printing press and framed innocent bystanders was thuggish, its supporters had a thuggish disposition and if you wanted to put an end to thuggery, you voted PN.
You grow up, you meet people, you chat to friends and acquaintances. And guess what? Amazingly, several of your fellow countrymen and women voted to keep the thugs in power and have voted for a man called Alfred Sant (known by some as Dottor Sant, by others as the bewigged marionette) in every single election since he’s been at the helm of the least left-wing of left-wing parties.
Now who are these loyal Labour supporters? If you were a Martian and happened to pick up a random Labour-bashing article written by one of our crop of independent columnists, you’d have to come to the conclusion that Labour party supporters must be a motley crew of morons with an IQ hovering somewhere between 15 and 25.
Well, we’re not Martians and we happen to know flesh and blood MLP supporters from the proverbial “all walks of life”. And here’s the catch. (...) They’re businessmen and students, lawyers and journalists, musicians, housewives and civil servants. Given that Sant’s party is depicted by some ‘independent’ journalists as something of an abomination, it is even more surprising to find several ‘educators’ (teachers, university lecturers and the like) among Sant’s voters. Are all these people delusional psychopaths? Are they all fools? Are they all vindictive maniacs with chips on their shoulders?
Far from it.
But all these people are playing the game they learnt from the MLPN rule book. Not a very complicated rule book to be honest. It goes like this: ‘Min mhux maghna kontra taghna ‘which translates roughly into ‘Buddy, you’ve got to choose your camp. It’s really the only way you can get on in life. There are rich pickings for the core group, decent rewards for the close friends and scraps for the hangers-on. The ordinary voter? Oh, he gets a fair reward too – that euphoric feeling of being part of ‘something bigger.’
The fact is that thousands of us have been happy to play this game and reap its rewards. Some stuck their flag in the blue camp, others stuck it in the red one. Every five years they await election time eagerly to see what the roulette game will throw up. Black or red? Even or odd? The feeling that our politics is running on the fuel of personal gain and short-term egoism is all-pervasive. It’s not difficult to see why panic and hysteria take over when the end of an era beckons.
A few of us have decided that this game won’t do. It’s simply not the way decent societies operate. It stinks of opportunism and patronage from top to bottom, sucking in academics, intellectuals, journalists and ‘artists’ with the contractors, the businessmen and the plain gullible. Some will argue that these are the rules of the political game everywhere in the ‘real world’. But here we’re talking about the extent of the problem. In Malta, one gets the feeling that very few people seem to be immune. The major proof of this is that journalists, who should be standard bearers of integrity, are seen to be the worst culprits. In this scenario we get the usual depressing (but frankly justified) chorus of “Bondi Nazzjonalist, Peppi Nazzjonalist, Daphne Nazzjonalista, Borg Cardona Nazzjonalist e cosi via.”
It has turned us into a nation of Dorian Grays whose souls are up for sale to God or to the Devil. It should be clear by now that many individuals continue to do well off the system and have absolutely no incentive to amend the rule book.
We have paid a heavy price for this short-sightedness in the past yet we appear to be unwilling to break the vicious circle we have created for ourselves. Make no mistake, the system suits several people like a glove for it offers prestige and rich pickings to those who prove that they are loyal servants in the courts of GonziPN or Viva l-Lejber. In Smart Malta, loyalty trumps integrity, merit, intelligence and honesty. Tellingly, the viciousness of the system has even managed to neutralise the few intellectuals worth their salt in this land of brutal pragmatists. It is a system which continues to deliver the goods: two political party stations presenting a nauseating, diametrically opposed picture of reality, the loathing and prejudice that continue to bedevil a country which has no ethnic, religious, racial or ideological divides but which appears to be gripped by hysteria every four years.
Isn’t it clear that what is at stake here goes far beyond the loaded mathematics of coalitions and thresholds?
As long as enough of us are happy to play the game according to the old rule book, any hopes of transforming Malta into a more decent society will remain firmly out of reach.
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Rather than something unthinkable, the move should be seen as the logical climax of a system gone horribly wrong. Just consider this: if disappointed, formerly vociferous blues are desperately looking for a new political platform from where to ‘build a just society’, would they ever choose those losers at Alternattiva? You’ve gotta be kidding! Quite tragically, the pragmatists won’t even spare us the moralising spiel. And to be quite frank, that’s what really gets to me.
