Silvio Berlusconi was giving a press conference this week in an attempt to patch up the disastrous farce that his party was guilty of in the run up to regional elections in Italy. The PdL had failed to register its list of candidates for the Lazio region within the permitted time and had thus precipitated a quasi-constitutional crisis. Italian politics is becoming more and more similar to what us Maltese are used to on a daily basis – same antics, same rhetoric and same mediatic farces.
Berlusconi’s party, guilty of having bumbled the registration process, has been trying to remedy the situation. Having seen that the normal legal remedies would not in any case allow for a late inscription of sorts, the party in government has conveniently drafted a law that allows it to participate in the elections just the same. President Napolitano has signed this decree provoking Antonio Di Pietro to cry foul and threaten impeachment of the selfsame President. The plot thickens. The PdL threatens to take the people to the streets in order to protest against this aggression on “the right to vote” should no remedy be found for its candidates to contest the election.
All this takes place in a media scenario that smacks of the surreal. Italian TV stations can report the news but a general nationwide moratorium on discussion programmes has been declared. Debate and open discussion has become the latest victim of absolute par condicio – when the attempt to balance debates equally between all sides fails then the next best remedy is gagging the whole lot of them. After all if the people are voting for parties the last thing they want to hear is a confrontation of their policies.
Picture then within this context Berlusconi standing on his podium at the press conference. He is all set for the attack on the maleficious left and its confabulating conspiratorial ‘cusations that are depriving half the electorate of their sacrosanct right to vote (for Berlusconi’s partys’ intende). Coiffed like a mafia hitman gone wrong, Berluska prepares to pick out the journalists who might be about to try their luck for a response when a lone man begins to heckle from within the audience. The man yells queries on the situation in the Abruzzo and on the Bertolaso trials but Berlusconi soldiers on trying to ignore the lone heckler.
When the man becomes too loud to ignore, Berlusconi attempts to call for order and point out that the heckler should wait his turn. Inutile. The heckles continue and for a moment Berlusconi forgets his political aplomb and insults the man as best he knows – “You are angry because you do not like the reflection in the mirror in the morning when you do your hair”. Interesting really, Berlusconi’s favourite insults seem to be aesthetic – ask Rosy Bindi if you don’t believe me. Anyways, the heckler proceeds undeterred until Minister La Russa does what PdL candidates do best: a “discesa in campo” (entry into the field) and proceeds to firmly and physically remove the heckler from the hall. The last words we hear are: “Ti querelo per aggressione nei miei confronti… ti dovresti vergognare… non ti ho alzato le mani… picchiatore fascista”. (I’ll sue you for aggression in my regard… you should be ashamed of yourself… I did not raise my hands… fascist beater).
Howl
There you have it. All the mediocre ingredients of modern day Mediterranean politics. Politicians who cannot organise a piss up in a brewery, pseudo-journalists who abuse their trade to heckle and harass, and the eventual spill over into the judicial field on the basis of some Don Camillo and Peppone accusation. Thankfully we have progressed from the age of the BR and bombs in train stations, but the nostalgia we have for creating cult heroes who “fight the political battles for the people” will lead to the puerile crying foul as soon as a shirt is tugged or a handbag is poked into a camera lens.
In Malta it has become an art unto itself. Whether it is NET TV or ONE TV, committing the televisual equivalent of photoshopping on the latest news item or whether it is an application of the horrible spin of guilt by association, the local race to mediocrity has proved to be prolific in this kind of base fighting. It used to be only in election time. One party would strategically place provocative billboards and film them 24/7 in the hope that one drunken thug or other would vent his anger on the leader’s face. The filming could then be used to accuse the other side of harbouring dangerous and violent elements.
It’s the spectre of the eighties coming to haunt us again and again. Not that it should be forgotten of course – but remembrance is one thing while abuse of the concept is disrespectful. The worst thing is that the viewers/readers are ever so easily manipulated. They have been numbed into a patent inability to discern between cause and effect. Evidence of this lies everywhere – in the blogs, on facebook and in the replies to the mainstream media articles. People have begun to react to the bit of news in the way they have been trained over the years – a pavlovian reaction that amounts to finding out whether the boys in blue or the boys in red are to blame for anything under the sun. Even if a discussion cannot remotely be linked to anything political, you can still easily detect the pro et contra mindset prepared to assault the bearer of the opposite ideas than the ideas themselves.
Pulped
New Labour is drowning. That is the perception I get from this far-flung corner of Europe. By New Labour I mean Joe’s Labour of course and not Gordon’s which lost its new label aeons ago. As Gonzi’s government passed the crucial two-year milestone there remain very few who still believe that Inhobbkom Joseph has what it takes to bring about the necessary changes to the Maltese political landscape. It seems aeons ago when Inhobbkom emerged from the Labour conference spouting bubbles of promise with every word. The bubbles are bursting one by one, and with every Labour attempt to prove it means business all we get is an empty masquerade created by emulators of a broken machine.
The main problem Labour has is that it builds its castle of dreams on disgruntlement. The “hurts” of a tribe that has seen an eternity in Opposition will probably one day get them through the hallowed gates of the majority – if you thought love is blind you should see disgruntlement in action… walking into lampposts and crashing into walls. J’accuse has dedicated tomes upon tomes of paper to point out that the Pick’N’Mix politics will work for nobody. It has its attractiveness in conning different sectors (often contradictory) into your voting base but is absolutely unmanageable once the deliverables are due.
Joseph Muscat is toying with ideas, such as listening to sectors by creating special fora. It does smack of emulation or imitation and I am sure that the Nationalist part of the schism must be flattered in their own weird way. The problem is that Joseph still believes that he can please everybody “so long as that everybody is unified under the one big umbrella of the disgruntled”. Which is why Joseph Muscat will not see how damaging this whole business of the “free vote” is.
On the road
So Prime Minister Gonzi has finally found jobs for the miscreant boys. The backbench rebels have been awarded for their perseverance with a place as Parliamentary Assistants. Messrs Pullicino Orlando and Farrugia opted out of the game but I must say that, on the whole, the shake-up looks slightly more than a simple cosmetic rearrangement. The PN parliamentary group has, in its own way, asserted its presence closer to the decision making throne than was previously available so part of their requests have been heard. What it gives us is a larger “Cabinet” what with all the twinning of sorts – at the end of the day we get Everybody’s Government. Literally.
By the time you read this, Saturday will have come and gone and the rally I spoke of last week will have taken place. I return to the theme of the rally because it is linked to what this government must assume as one of its priorities at this halfway mark of its programme. The theme of the rally was a call for the application of existing laws – laws that are being ignored or neglected. In the wider ambit of Plategate and the accusations that are being carried therein, I would go one further and urge this government to call for a debate on the state of the rule of law in this nation.
Once we’re at it and mentioning Plategate, we note with pleasure that the charges in the genesis of the whole issue have been dropped. The Caruana Galizia family is – we are glad to see – at peace (no sarcasm there). The country is left with much more than broken crockery to clean up thanks to the reactions of a blogger who felt threatened. The spin-off of the original reaction is now beyond the control of the originator. The battlefields are multiple. There is of course the media circus with such jesters as a One TV crew and WE analysis teams. There is the court case that currently seems to provide a victory on points to the accused. There is the open jury online which continues to suffer from selective amnesia. One appears to lie in court and the other recants (or reorders the claims) online – the truth remains the main sufferer.
What one would have hoped to see (and is still hoping to see) is a clear, categorical and unqualified list of substantiated (or that could be substantiated) allegations directed at the magistrate in question. One clear list is all it would take. Remove the cobwebs. Remove the gripes and side-jibes at the entourage. It would be a list that can be taken far from the comedic parameters of libel and slander. If the Running Commentary really wants to be the great service to society that speaks where others fear to speak, then all it needs to do is write this list once. Clearly. And be prepared to substantiate whatever allegations are made in the appropriate forum – the courts of law where justice is equal for all.
Instead of catfights about buses and parties and wheels within wheels, those who seem to be so deserving of an automatic law degree simply need to gather the evidence and use it – otherwise what we have on our hands is nothing better than a blogging version of Alfred Sant’s “moral convictions”. That would be an immense service and one would hope that the same service could be provided EVERY TIME a similar violation of the ethics and laws regulating public persons is brought to her (considerably wide) attention.
Kerouac
Violence reared its very ugly head again this week. J’accuse’s sympathies go to Vince Farrugia – whatever the case may be, he remains a victim of a violent assault. The person responsible has been charged for attempted murder – no small thing. This incident has sparked its fair share of political offshoots – from those attempting to minimise its existence to those distorting the true story value to capitalise cheaply thereupon.
The people may be disgruntled. The government may be tiptoeing around trying to find a new compass while the Opposition languishes in its misguided efforts. Whatever the case we sincerely hope that the language and discourse of today’s politics do not usher in a new era of moral and political violence. We’d hate to be known as the New Beat Generation for the wrong reasons.
This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.
