The Rot in Wonderland

Following a rabbit can be quite a silly thing to do. Especially one wearing a waistcoat and carrying a watch. Of course it remains silly so long as you are not Alice about to begin her adventures in Wonderland or, as the new Tim Burton movie has it, Underland. Alice is back in a Wonderland that is slowly rotting away thanks to the obsessions of the Red Queen and the minion “spittle-suckers” who surround her in nodding appeasement. Don’t worry, I am not about to embark on a long winded metaphor about Queens, prima donnas and their reigns and whatnot – too many have done so already and I find this dithering kind of talk rather dull and conjectural.

As I walked out of the cinema this evening I could only think of Wonderland and how fantastically fabricated it all is with its nonsensical cutting-edge reality. Yes, it is a nonsensical paradox that flummoxes and zooms straight into the grey matter of the brain through the bothersome 3D glasses you are obliged to carry throughout the fantasmagorical performance. Nonsensical cutting-edge reality can only be experienced in two places – the first is that portrayed wonderfully by Tim Burton and the second is the one we have (dis)affectionately come to refer to as “Only In Malta”.

Pray do reserve a bit of patience for me, your bearer of phantsy stuff this week, particularly when you encounter the odd pseudo-word that immediately evokes the red underline-ings of a word/processing document. You see it is hard to shed the influence of Lewis Carroll once you get infected with the bug. The author was brilliant (or should I say brillig?) at coining new words in such a way that they would still make sense because of the context in which he masterly entwined them. Anyhoo. Let’s see what happened in our corner of underland.

’Twas Brillig

’Twas only in this wonderland of ours that the provocations launched last week from this platform could be ignored with such audacious abandon. You will remember the little matter of my analysis of the Death of Journalism and how I argued that Malta’s Award Winning Talk Show Programme and its host abdicated from their investigative responsibility in cunning collaboration with Malta’s foremost media expert. I almost believed that my time would have been better spent organising tea parties in the company of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare were it not for the fact that the article did get feedback though not, understandably, from the parties that were, so to speak, in the dock.

Mr Lou Bondi and Fr Joe Borg preferred to ignore my questions (unless of course there is a letter in today’s paper*) and concentrate on whatever they felt should attract their precious attention. Meanwhile, those who, like me, tend to buy the whole panoply of available English literature on a Sunday, would have discovered (surely to their unbounded joy) that J’accuse had been twice served for the discerning palate. The geezers over at MaltaToday had availed themselves of the very legal right under the Creative Commons licence to reproduce whole chunks of my blogging analysis. Well, so long as they do not do it regularly I’m sure we can deal with all the publicity.

Cheek apart, we were vindicated within 24 hours of our articles appearing in print in spite of the fact that Bondi & Borg would not deign to reply to our queries. Last Monday the Bondiplus investigative consortium settled down for another nail-biting episode that was meant to include the presence of Malta’s proof that vampires do exist and our own version of Hugo Chavez Wannabeism. For some reason or other, the mass rallying presence of John Bencini and Tony Zarb (MUT and GWU respectively) was forfeited at the last moment.

Only a week before Bondi had sheepishly accepted the absence of both Caruana Galizia and Musumeci without so much as a sneeze. Last Monday though, the Bondiplus machine went on the warpath. Rachel was despatched to Valletta to harass and harangue the poor stirrers of mass hysteria into submission. The tactic Rachel used was basically to stun them with a barrage of complicated questions such as “Why are you not coming on Bondiplus? Why are you not coming on Bondiplus?” And for good measure, “Why are you not coming on Bondiplus?” Bencini attempted to dodge Rachel like he probably would a ray of sunshine or a silver bullet. Tony Zarb seemed to be flummoxed by the questions only to regain his composure (so to speak) towards the end and give Lou Bondi the answer he had been looking for “We have said all we had to say”.

Was Lou happy with the answer? He was happy to accept all of Daphne’s doings in the blog without the slightest hint of any further questions just the week before. Was he happy this week? Of course not. Hell hath no fury like a Bondi scorned. Suddenly he was issuing press releases claiming discrimination of sorts before leading to what was – at least for J’accuse – the sublime cherry on the cake.

Bencini and Zarb had requested a preview of the questions by email. Nyet said Bondi. Not only that, but he continued to protest, first on Facebook and then in what has now become a customary epistle to the press: “follow up questions are necessary in such an interview”. At which point you expected to see the Cheshire Cat apparate right in front of you while Absalom would be puffing away on some hallucinogenic substance filling the air with smoke. Follow up questions? On Bondiplus? Well I never. Curiouser and curiouser.

The Slithy Toves

What was all that ruckus in Valletta anyway? We had a double-whammy of a protest against the rising cost of bills and water services. Like a cheap Hollywood sequel nothing much was expected to come out of it unless of course you are the crazy sort who thinks in a Carollian sort of way. Tweedledum and Tweedledee assembled the massed cohorts in palace square and proceeded to remind us all why Malta is so desperately in need of real politicians. Meanwhile, in the hallowed hall of representative power the movers and shakers of progressive Malta were submitting a motion to repeal the utilities bill.

The inevitable result of this motion was a defeat of the Opposition and a reason for Messrs Zarb and Bencini to declare that “the people had been betrayed”. In Wonderland, the concept of a working democracy had once again gone haywire. A couple of unions had just discovered that the people do not like being heavily taxed (or in this case having subsidies removed in an aggressive manner) and that they could still perform the nonsensical show of force if they wanted to. The flexible bandwagon that is the progressive and moderate Opposition fancied its chances to seem like the bulwark of the people’s rights without having to perform the ginormous effort of effectively planning a clear economic programme out of this mess. And the rest is history.

What the Opposition and unions failed to see was that this is a legitimate action by a legitimately elected government. Unpopular as these measures are they are also necessary and, unless some genius in Hamrun comes up with a better idea of how to alleviate the utility bill paying misery without bankrupting the state, then all this hullabaloo must be seen as the farce that it was – an excuse to be seen stirring up the faeces without a clear idea of what to do next. What’s new anyway?

The Manxome Foe

For its part, the party in government has managed to create a semblance of an idea of a reunited group. Top J’accuse marks this week go to Gonzi’s cunning plan of keeping his team together via the system of reponsibilisation. The Franco Debonos of this world are being twinned with ministries in a sort of apprenticeship. It is not yet clear how the workings of this arrangement will actually come about (and whether they will cost anything more) but it is evident that whatever is at the helm of the PN has been scrambling for ideas on how to appease the broken pieces.

Which does not mean that all is fine and dandy. It means that the existence of a problem has been recognised (internally) and that something is being done about it. Will GonziPN manage to meld again? Is flimkien really possibbli? We’ll have to wait and assess the deliverables to see how this GonziPN mark II fares, but in the meantime we will remind Honourable Member Debono that his original crusade was not for a twinning project but for such things as the regulation of party financing. Anything new about that project?

Gyving and Grimbling

One problem GonziPN will really need to solve is the rapid loss of trust in all things institutional. On Saturday, for example, a number of environmental NGOs will join forces in a rally to highlight their concerns about “the environmental abuses that are taking place in every part of Malta and Gozo. This does not just include planning abuse but air pollution, lack of water conservation measures, illegal hunting and trapping, illegal occupation of the countryside, destruction of habitats and species, as well as encroachment of the countryside due to the Rationalisation scheme.”

The rally is called “Legality Now” and the name reflects the fact that the NGOs are not lobbying for the introduction of new environmental friendly laws but rather will be protesting at the lack of application and enforcement of laws that already exist. These citizens are not rallying behind a cry to back a policy or another – to give an example, it is not a “for or against hunting” kind of rally where one could take a political side on a political issue. The declared intention of the rally goes deeper – it is a manifestation of discontent with the state of enforcement of current laws.

This may seem like a tiny nuance to the casual observer but the express aims of this rally have much in common with one of the corollaries that have been drawn from Plategate. It is the lack of faith and trust in public institutions. It is one thing for political rallies to gather the masses in an effort to lobby in favour of the adoption of one policy or another – or to force the government to change its utility bill policy. It would be amiss to ignore the message this kind of rally is sending. They may not be the grievances leading to the serment du jeu de paume but these particular grievances are worth considering.

All three branches of the state are currently under heavy attack and the levels of trust that “the people” seem to have in the administrative, executive and the judiciary appear to be alarmingly low. This is not healthy for our democracy – it’s a rot that is setting in. The rot must be exposed, not in a partisan, self-interested kind of way but rather in an objective attempt at rediscovering what we want for the future of our nation.

Oh Frabjous Day!

Meanwhile in another corner of Wonderland, since our very own Inhobbkom Joseph has embarked on an illusory trip of his own – meeting bureaucrats on an educational programme described by his bumbling entourage as a State visit (Lord Help Us all) we might begin to despair on the shape of things to come. When the Leader of the Opposition goes to France on a trip intended for foreign visitors of all types (Iva, Tista’ tkun Int) and his press office attempt to disguise it as some form of state visit (We discussed the Lisbon Treaty – and the Future EU Presidency) you really have to begin to wonder whether you have fallen in some hole while following the waistcoat-clad rabbit.

Across the channel, the Italian political system is in a huge farcical mess. You’d love to poke fun at them only until you notice that it’s like peeping through the looking glass. It’s impossible… but only if you believe it is.

www.akkuza.com is now also a Facebook page that you can join. Come along and carry our facebook slogan with pride: Cut me, paste me, bite me.

This article and accompanying Bertoon were published on today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.

(*)No letter appeared in The Malta Independent, instead, Mr Lou Bondi preferred to tackle the extremely complicated question of the apparent bias of the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IGM). It’ like playing FIFA with Brasil but chosing to tackle Botswana rather than Argentina or Spain. Then again I guess Bondi was in a very good position to assess bias. Funny how the question of “aggression” being bloated up by partisan media is suddenly fashionable – would Bondi care to learn how it is another result of the school of bipartisan thought that produces mediocrity by the ton? Guess not. Prosit tal-programm Lou.