What was he thinking?

Indietro Tutta! was a hugely popular satirical programme that aired on Italian TV (Rai2) just before the evening news for four short months (65 episodes in all) between December 1987 and March 1988. The programme introduced a new vein of humour to Italian TV thanks mainly to the po-faced feigned imbecility of co-hosts Nino Frassica and Renzo Arbore. A part from being a milestone of Italian comic lore, part of the great heritage of Indietro Tutta! was the phantom product “cacao maravigliao”. In a tongue in cheek take on the huge increase in advertising (Xarabank 2012 – Mediaset 1980s) that had just flooded TV in the eighties, the co-hosts began to advertise a new sponsor for the programme – Cacao Meravigliao.

Supposedly it was a new product from Brasil that everybody would like – a cocoa of sorts. The “ad” included a catchy jingle (see video) danced to the samba rhythm with scantily dressed chicas for good measure. It was an instant success. The tune was on everybody’s lips and soon it was reported that there was high demand for the product all over Italy – with many customers only finding out the disappointing truth at the tills of the Supermercati Co-In (this was before Auchan)… Cacao Maravigliao did not exist. It was a spoof. (There were some intrepid entrepreneurs in Naples who quickly packaged some cocoa in a hastily assembled Cacao Meravigliao packaging – but that is another story).

Fast forward to two Gonzi – Muscat debates and the mentioning of a particular Brazilian firm that was supposedly “relocating” to Malta. We all know the story of how Gonzi won spelling bee points during the debates by making Muscat look like an uninformed fool. When the subject came out I had no doubt that our PM would know what he was saying. After all this is 2012 and every assertion made in a debate can be verified. This was not even the eve of an election when it would be too late to contradict his statements (like the time when dear Eddie had come up with so much crap about AD).

No. This was a public debate with lots of time for sleuths to go fishing for this company. Gonzi told us he did not want the Brazilian company to be named to avoid its getting embroiled in “political football”. Since when do Brazilians shy way from football anyway? But that is not the point. The news is now out that “The Brazilian firm is a four man operation that is closing down” (Times headline – and by the way … a four-man operation? What kind? Sex-change maybe?). Oberdrecht – for such is the Brasilian company’s name – does exist (a diet of cold war spy stories has taught me to shy away from South Americans with German names but hey… it’s a global village nowadays is it not?).

When Alison Bezzina had written about her discovery of the company on the Times I did a quick google search. Turns out that the only mention of Oberdrecht and Malta was when the company was evacuating its enterprises from Libya during the uprising. My guess at the time was simply that having discovered Malta “en passant” and having lost its main base in Libya then Odebrecht must have decided to set up an organisational base in this “bridge to the African continent”. How that decision was flagged somewhere in PN spin-land and how it became “a major relocation of a big Brasilian company’s HQ to Malta” is anybody’s guess. You’d expect the PM to have people checking such facts before spouting them out as major scoops.

What we have now is Lawrence Gonzi probably rueing the day he mentioned anything Brazilian. Odebrecht is Gonzi’s “Cacao Mervaiglao” though the comic effect is definitely unintentional. The biggest mess was the delay tactic involved once it probably became clear that there was no huge conglomerate moving to Malta and creating employment. Feeble excuses like not naming the company for the company’s sake were not even close to satiating the curiousity of press and public.

Next time Gonzi should try scantily clad girls ready for the samba drome… all he’d need would be a catchy tune… then the people will believe ANYTHING.