Anna Mallia | Wednesday, 10 February 2010 Issue. 150

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Character assassination

If you want to get somebody out of the way, or you do not like the judge or magistrate who is judging your case, all you have to do is to add some fuel to the fire, because anyone can create content and post it online.

This is not about who is right and who is wrong but this is the result of people losing faith in the institutions and finding their refuge or revenge on the internet. Anyone can write to the Commission for the Administration of Justice and report the conduct of a magistrate or judge and anyone can write to the party administration reporting the conduct of a party candidate. And anyone can make a report to the police and report any wrongdoing.

But when people choose to bypass the institutions and revert to the power of the internet, they are saying out loud that they do not trust the existing institutions and the Nationalist Party mechanisms, and prefer to use the internet because it is far more powerful than all these put together. This is what ultimately it is all about – losing faith in the institutions; and if the persons losing such faith are Nationalists sympathisers let alone what Labour supporters and sympathisers must be feeling.

The dangerous thing about it is that we have a Prime Minister, who by accepting what is written on the internet, has acknowledged that the existing mechanisms do not work. It was reported in the media that he told Musumeci that it was inopportune to contest the by-election for a Nationalist seat in Parliament, notwithstanding that the party administration had no complaints against his candidature. In so doing he has acknowledged that his party mechanism is not the right forum for the impeachment of any party candidate.

We had the ‘hate Gonzi’ blog which was closed because of its content, but it seems that there is nothing wrong with having ‘hate Labour’ and ‘hate Muscat’ blogs. If in the 1980s, political campaigns were fought in the streets. I am sure that next year the political campaign will fought on the internet and in political and politically motivated independent
blogs.

I am also sure that character assassination will be the order of the day in the next general election campaign, because when a political party loses his credibility and has nothing to sell to the electorate, its only remaining weapon is to denigrate the character of the components of his opponent. The recipe was a success in the case of Musumeci, and it will work with the other people who stand in their way.

I believe that this can be defined as character assassination because. it’s about the personalities behind the politics more than the politics. If one can’t dismantle their opponent’s view ideologically, then do it by getting personal and mean. It is no longer a campaign on policies but it will be a campaign on the moral fibre of the candidates.
Gonzi, having given in to slanderous politics, must come clean and assure us that this will not be the way that the next general election campaign is going to be fought. And he must do this very fast, because until he does that we shall see a profusion of blogs on the internet tearing up the PN members of Parliament and their MEPs and their PN candidates and sympathizers the same way. And if he thinks that his people are immune, he is mistaken.

It is his responsibility to remove this social frustration, failing which he will be condoning this way of doing politics. Politics is about gaining power and in order to do that sometimes you build people up with words and take others down from their high positions.

The cycle of building and verbally taking others down has worked, politically speaking, over the years and the Musumeci case is no exception; although oddly enough, the source did not come from the political opponent, that is Labour, but from an ally of his party.
This reminds me of what John Dalli stated when he was asked about the source of the slanderous email that was circulated to the MEPs before his oral test, when he stated that he is sure that it was from within his own party.

And by the looks of things, it is not stopping there as other political and public figures appear to be next in line. This is bringing nothing but societal frustration towards the government and the opposition and no real political leadership.

This is why Labour has to be very careful at this moment in time. It is in a stage of building policies, and must remain vigilant so that these policies will not be engulfed by the possible campaign of character assassination that is likely to happen in the next elections – attacks which will obviously not come directly from the PN headquarters, but from their sympathisers trading in the name of ‘independent’ writers.

I admit that there is the Constitutional right to free speech, but I am afraid that this will give rise to a profusion of bloggers in the coming months, baring all about public officials and political personalities in this country. It is going to be a ‘Vallettopoli’, made in Malta, with a Maltese ‘Corona’ extorting money in exchange from non-publication of a piece of private life. (Fabrizio Corona is an Italian paparazzi photographer, currently on trial for blackmailing celebrities with ‘incriminating’ photographs).

We have no publications of what the Italians call ‘Cronaca Rosa’ in this country, but we surely have cronaca rosa on the internet and the situation is such that it is a campaign of scaremongering those who are thinking of making a career in politics or in public life.

The real worry is that this attitude – if you disagree with me, you are clearly evil – is likely to be the order of the day in the next general election campaign!

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.

Download the MaltaToday newspaper advertising rates in PDF format

European Elections special editions

01 June 2009
02 June 2009
03 June 2009
04 June 2009
08 June 2009