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NEWS | Wednesday, 10 October 2007

Three times nasty, three times sorry

The moment the national anthem played out of the tannoy, the PN’s general council turned into a schizophrenic switch from partisan shortwave to visionary broadband. But this to-ing and fro-ing from ‘nasty’ to ‘benign’ moods risks undermining the moral high ground which the Prime Minister is so keen to retain, reports James Debono.

In his third landmark speech since May, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has stood on a moral high ground and avoided any reference to Alfred Sant in his speeches. Whether this is a deliberate strategy to let the troops do the dirty work without dirtying the hands of the dear leader, or whether it shows Gonzi’s own inability to restrain explosive characters like Gatt, is irrelevant. The campaign is getting dirtier and Gonzi cannot afford to keep himself aloof from what his underlings say and do.
On Sunday the dirty job of denigrating Alfred Sant was left to Austin Gatt – a senior minister in Gonzi’s cabinet known for his driven but haughty attitude – who went as far as saying that Alfred Sant would be fit for a documentary on politicians with a drink or drug problem.
To the applause of party councillors, Gatt said: “Let’s start with a joke today… I think many of you know that Discovery Channel has a programme called Altered Statesman. It analyzes a number of people with political power who allegedly had alcohol problems or who swallowed pills while taking decisions. After the Birzebbugia meeting they were going to make another episode. But Sant told them that he was normal… that he wanted to make a joke.”
A gentle wave of laughter, not side-splitting guffaws, spread across the room, the typical reception to Gatt’s chipper style of delivering addresses. Surely, it couldn’t have been a comfortable moment for the Prime Minister.
And yet, instead of sticking up for Gatt, the party’s leadership simply chose to disassociate itself from the gaffe. It had not been the first time the leadership failed to stick up for “errant” cabinet members and for the sins of the party media.
First it was the Prime Minister who dissociated himself from a PN news item attacking Sant for not kissing the crucifix when taking an oath in court. In contrast with the PN organ’s priority given to Sant’s “refusal to kiss the cross”, Gonzi distanced himself from the story. “This is a highly personal issue and I believe that it should be left to the individual to decide for him or herself,” the former president of the Catholic Action said.
And then it was again the Prime Minister to dissociate himself from his own parliamentary secretary, the one and only Tony Abela, who badgered One journalist Charlon Gouder in a threatening tone of whether he would emigrate away from Malta if Labour would lose the elections. Lawrence Gonzi redeemed himself again on Bondiplus, describing Gouder as a “good journalist” and disagreeing with Tony Abela’s comment.
And now it was Joe Saliba’s turn to put forward the party administration’s regrets during this week’s Bondiplus edition, declaring that Gatt could have “avoided” saying the highly offensive words.
But if Gonzi and Saliba really want a clean campaign, they must keep their troops in line. Otherwise they are open to the charge of hypocrisy.

Gonzi’s counter attack
One sure consequence of Gatt’s misguided missile was to deflect attention from his own leader’s bold attempt at regaining ground lost during his first debate with Alfred Sant on Bondiplus, where his self-congratulatory bombast over compliments received from the European Central Bank governor Jean-Claude Trichet exposed him to the Sant’s charge that he “is an echo for bankers” and insensitive to the hardships faced by families.
Gonzi showed a remarkable ability to respond to criticism that he was detached from the realities faced by Maltese families. He addressed this criticism head-on by referring to the families who stopped to congratulate his government as he walked among the crowds who flocked to Valletta in last Saturday’s Notte Bianca.
“This time it was not Trichet or Almunia who told me that Malta is performing well, it was the Maltese and Gozitans who told me so.”
For the first time Gonzi also addressed discontentment over the water and electricity surcharge, which the MLP promises to cut by half. He invited parents to make a choice: should these millions of liri be used to halve the surcharge or should this money be invested in education for their children?
Education and young people were the focus of Gonzi’s 48-minute long speech during which he mentioned the word education 20 times, nearly once every two minutes.
A row of pretty young women strategically placed sitting right behind him also helped Gonzi project an uplifting message of optimism.
He also insisted that the government had never forgotten those 27,000 low-income earners who are exempted from the surcharge.
But what Gonzi seems to be ignoring is the plight of lower middle-income earners who just scrape through by the end of the month and who need financial relief to give their children a future. Although uplifting, Gonzi’s vision remains somewhat abstract and futuristic and only the next budget could give it the first signs of concreteness. This time round he spoke too much on projects and visions and very little on how to revive the purchasing power of the lower middle classes.
Unlike the abrasive and fearless Gatt who attacks frontally, Gonzi was more sophisticated in his snides at Labour.
And the salient moment of Gonzi’s speech was the moment when he introduced footballer Michael Mifsud as the young man who embodies the “national spirit” which has shed its sense of inferiority. Ironically, by appropriating one of the few national icons for his own partisan interests, Gonzi could have robbed the country of a unifying factor. Even in this particular moment, Gonzi could not even resist taking a swipe at Labour.
“Mifsud is a symbol of Malta’s success in the world. Don’t let anyone call you whitebait (makku). Don’t let them belittle you.”
The term whitebait was used by Alfred Sant to refer to Labour’s fear that Malta would be swallowed by the EU giants. Sitting next to a motherly Kate Gonzi a beaming Mifsud seemed completely oblivious to this act of political consumption of a national idol.
Skilfully, Gonzi negotiated between the Labour party and the Labour voter, recounting how during the Notte Bianca a young father approached him to tell him: “I am a Labourite, but with you at the helm my mind is at rest.”
Gonzi even resorted to a Celentano-style categorisation of cool and uncool policies referring to Labour policies as “hofra” (hole) and Nationalist policies as “quccata” (peak). “Ten years ago when they were in government they talked about holes. We talk about reaching the peak. Three years and a half ago, they used to speak of Switzerland of the Mediterranean – a hole; we talked about full membership – a peak.” He mentioned the comparison eight times.
Yet unconsciously Gonzi seems to have got his chronology wrong. By harping on this three-and-a-half-years-ago legacy, he seems to have forgotten that the EU issue was already resolved by his predecessor Eddie Fenech Adami.
The Prime Minister also showed a very petty understanding of the environment. After boasting he had increased the expenditure on the environment from Lm5 million to Lm47 million, he said that he would have preferred spending all this money “to change the mentality” over the environment – going only as far as denouncing the mentality of children throwing papers on the floor.

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From facelifts to altered states

SIGNS THAT IT’S OPEN SEASON ON ALFRED SANT

30 May – The ‘facelift’ dig
Fresh from a surgical intervention on his eyelids, Sant is filmed being paraded at the Lufthansa Teknik hangar wearing dark sunglasses. Weeks later, during the PN’s general council, secretary-general Joe Saliba accuses the MLP of being a party of “facelifts” among other things. Labour secretary-general Jason Micallef claims it was all choreographed. “I was on the big screen just as Saliba was talking of facelifts, and Sunday’s Mument had a cartoon referring to the issue.”

26 August – Things get hairy
Daphne Caruana Galizia unearths the long forgotten ruse over Sant’s ability or lack thereof to govern successfully for wearing a wig. How ideas come to depend on the strength and volume of one’s locks boggles the mind – look at what North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s bouffant makes him do.

25 September – A new cross to bear
PN organ In-Nazzjon expresses Catholic outrage at Sant for failing to kiss the crucifix before testifying in court, taking a solemn oath instead. In contrast Lawrence Gonzi distanced himself from the story. “This is a highly personal issue and I believe that it should be left to the individual to decide for him or herself.”

30 September – The Great Unmentionable Wig
Daphne once again imparts her theory of normal, virile, heterosexuals being naturally averse to the wearing of toupees, unless they are “involved in the arts” (suspiciously an area where wig-wearing must be proliferating). Humour points go for calling it a “playmobil” wig.

7 October – Altered states of mind
The bullish Austin Gatt displays his imagination and love for Cable TV when he says Alfred Sant would be a fitting candidate for the Discovery Channel’s Altered Statesmen, a documentary series on alkies like Winston Churchill and Boris Yelstin. The innuendo is the hallmark of a dirty campaign.

 



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