Columnist Lino Spiteri has made an amusing analogy about the young-ish candidates that Lawrence Gonzi is flanking himself with at various meetings with different sections of industry. He compared them to cherries on a stale cake. Ranging from ex-DJs David Agius and Clyde Puli to Siggiewi mayor Robert Musumeci to Georg Sapiano – who’s still sporting a goatee half a decade after it went out of fashion – they are the bright young things who are expected to help Gonzi get his groove back.
During those meetings with the constituted bodies which become such an urgent priority in the weeks leading up to the election, the Prime Minister has turned up with a coterie of the PN’s brightest and the best. Presumably the message which the Prime Minister means to convey is that the party which he heads is not yesterday’s party, peopled only with the same faces which we have grown up with. He would have us believe that the party is buzzing with young people with new ideas who will give a Nationalist government pep and zing.
Asked for his comments, Joe Saliba explained that the accompanying candidates could form part of Team Gonzi if the PN is elected. That’s because, according to Joe, the PN is a party of vision and promotes new faces who could form part of government. This is where he loses me – and, I suspect, thousands of other voters. Because if the Prime Minister really thought that this infusion of fresh young blood was really necessary, he’d have appointed a couple of newcomers to Cabinet a long time ago. If he thought that they could carry out their portfolios with a higher degree of efficiency and flair than the incumbent lot then he should have shot them into their respective hot seats ages ago.
Yet he chose not to, lumbering us with 1980s relics such as Ninu Zammit and Louis Galea and keeping the faith with the spectacularly under-performing Francis Zammit Dimech and the bumbling Jesmond Mugliett. It was only recently that talk of a clean sweep and a new line-up started making the rounds. All of which goes to show that it’s another pre-election gimmick with the Prime Minister desperately hoping that some of the candidates’ freshness will rub off on him. Well, I suppose he can hope, but it’s a little late in the day for this rejuvenation attempt. It’s a bit like rubbing in tubs of anti-wrinkle cream when one’s skin is already sagging and lined. Perhaps he should have invested more energy in ensuring that his ministers worked as efficiently as possible within their portfolio then on seeking out new faces for a hypothetical future cabinet. If good governance is the cake in this analogy, Lawrence Gonzi should have concentrated on that, rather than on plopping his fresh cherries on the top.

I was walking down to the beach the other day when I caught sight of a small gaggle of people sweating uncomfortably under a plastic gazebo in the public garden below the promenade. Squinting my eyes against the sun’s glare I managed to make out that the mini-crowd was mostly made up of Nationalist candidates and party people.
“Oh, so it’s them this time,” I remarked, my conclusion being further confirmed by the trio or so of cars with government number plates parked on double yellow lines.
As the unseen speaker (the Prime Minister?) at the sweatfest drove home another point with verve and flair (at least that’s what he might have hoped it sounded like, I was striding out of earshot), I got to wondering what those people under the tent were being told. Judging by the coverage of these events given by the local newspapers, it would seem that it’s a predictable litany of Nationalist achievements and ratings given by international observers. Mater Dei, the economy, the cruise liner terminal, low cost carriers, happiest people in the world, Standard and Poor credit rating... and maybe the fact that the Economist Intelligence Unit has listed Malta as being the 15th most democratic place in the world.
That’s right. The EIU has carried out a study and found out that we’re much more democratic than countries such as the United Kingdom and France. This study followed another carried out by Transparency International which concluded that Malta was relatively free from corruption and where Malta ranked quite highly in the clean stakes (25th out of 158 countries). This despite the fact that when a survey about corruption was held locally, the overwhelming majority of respondents showed that they believed that corruption was rampant.
Conclusions which are so divergent from those drawn by people who live in Malta and who have first-hand experience of what goes on here, leads me to believe that the foreign compilers of these studies don’t have a clue about the realities which we face. I’m thinking that they probably flip through our statute books, see that we have a permanent commission against corruption, judges who can’t be fired by ministers, and no dead bodies coming out of police depots (as of late), and figure that we’re up there with the democratic ones. Then they have a look at our voting records and swoon with delight at what they see as electoral participation. What these foreign compilers miss out on is the fact that many of these so-called guard-dog bodies are merely paper tigers which are under-staffed and under-resourced. Corruption convictions are rare (When was the last time someone important was prosecuted and convicted of corruption?). Not because there aren’t any, but because it’s tolerated, mainly by the all-important political class.
There is no culture of political accountability and whenever a minister gets caught in what can euphemistically be termed as “questionable behaviour”, the press is taken to task for hounding him. Bribery is so commonplace it has ceased to shock.
Last week’s edition of this newspaper showed the grinning mugs of some four leading building contractors proudly declaring that they bankrolled both parties. I find it very hard to believe that they do this because they agree with the policies of both parties and support both of them at the same time.
And what is the likelihood of them financing political parties out of the goodness of their hearts? It’s quite evident that these “donations” have strings attached and that favours will be called in at some point in future. And yet, these facts have escaped the attention of the foreign compilers and we are placed up there with the well-behaved democratic countries to look down upon others such as Italy which are classified as “flawed democracies”. How could they get it so wrong? It just goes to show that you shouldn’t believe everything, no matter how gratifying or by whom compiled.