Politics has reached a shallow point in Malta. We’ve all heard that phrase by now. Trust in politicians on the island has gravitated towards the same low point as has been shared for a long time and for different reasons on the rest of the continent. We’re slightly delayed – it has only just begun to dawn on a large part of the population that “the Game” has nothing to do with power and that the alternating race to mediocrity is only destined to produce more of the same, but different. At the same time as this great realisation is happening – within the confines of cliche’ ridden appraisals that your average citizen is capable of – there is still a strong pull towards the partisan DNA that is, much to the chagrin of Andrew Borg Cardona and Charles Mangion, programmed into the vast majority of the voting population.
It’s not just Konrad Mizzi who is afflicted by the mysterious “internal conflict”, it’s all bona fide “partitarji” on both sides of the political chasm. Labourites cannot believe that their government is coming so close to repeating the short stunt under Sant… one mega-crisis and it’s all over. Deep down they all see the horrible error in Mizzi’s ways, even they understand that the Energy Minister’s position is untenable but they are loath to admit it. The pull of the party is too huge and trumps all. The Nationalist party card bearers also have a dilemma of their own. They’d love to see the back of this government but they are still not 100% convinced that their own party is good enough to lead and many have still not understood the modus operandi of Simon’s politics.
The time would have been ripe for reasoned debate centred around reform and improvement. Politics, particularly party politics, is in the doldrums. Anyone with a brain between their ears could tell that the sell-by date of mediocre politics is long past. Reasoned debate and rational argument are what the doctor ordered – it’s the right medicine for both parties internally as well as for our institutional set-up. Rational and reasoned debate requires information and an exchange of ideas and programmes with the best for the country being the ultimate goal.
What we have got instead is the return of the non-political exchange. Politics with a big P has been thrown out of the window and the machines of spin are out all over again because as soon as a moment of crisis brings the faint glimmer of a possible election round the corner our parties do what they do best – entrench and send out the soldiers: in this case one important element are the “doorsteppers”.
It’s not a new breed of political animal. The latest morph on both sides are Mario Frendo and Nicole Buttigieg. They are sent to the enemy lines in search of the soundbite that can be processed and fed into the propaganda machine. They form part of a wider circle and game played by the politicians themselves who hide behind feeble excuses, half-truths and word games to destroy any possibility of debate. We’ve seen them before. Joseph Muscat was one of them himself. Ministers and shadow ministers on both sides of parliament began their career as doorstepping journalists of sorts, as did some of our MEPs. I remember one of the earlier morphs of these doorsteppers in the form of Simone Cini who shadowed Eddie Fenech Adami all the way to PN mass meetings provoking the worst out of the worst.
It’s weird. Even the language of the two parties switches away from real meaningful essence and we now hear of accusations of “fascism”, “return to the eighties”, “stifling of speech” and more. The nationalist party brouhaha about the use of criminal libel was surreal for example for it really begged the question “What did you think of criminal libel in the 25 years that you were in government?”. Someone from the Independent did bother asking Marthese Portelli only to get some long-winded non-reply based on “just look at the good things we have done in those years so please just ignore the way we looked away from any possible reform”.
“Concentrating on the good we did” seems to be the new karma. Konrad Mizzi is magically oblivious to his textbook case of “things not to do unless you want to lose your position as minister”. He still thinks that it’s a conspiracy by the PN to remove what he believes is the best performing Labour cabinet member and nothing more. Aside from the fact that his own admission of naivety should suffice to make him lose any possibility of sitting in ANY position of public responsibility, his excuse seems to have gone down as sufficiently plausible with the rest of the PL crowd. Now he’s probably on his way to being anointed as a soldier of steel.
So we are down to looking at the doorsteppers. Planted in the middle of crowds who have the collective political nous of a football hooligan they will “interview” and provoke for the sake of getting a snapshot of the worst of the worst of the opposite party’s supporters – oblivious all the while to the fact that they could very well have sampled someone from their own inner circles with very much the same results.
… to be continued
