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Even More Lessons in Irrelevance
It’s the battle of the leaks. You can barely read a bit of news nowadays without a leak being mentioned somewhere or other. So who gave the game away to the Nationalist party that Dr Sant had a trick up his sleeve? Who gave away the hints that it would be Mistra and that JPO would be the target? Who in the Nationalist party leaked the parts of the contract to the Labour party so that they could make a meal out of JPO? Who knew about the leaks? Who stayed mum?
You hear so much about the leaks going this way and that that after a while you forget what was actually leaked. Then you get caught in the cross-fire discussing the leaks and before you know it Joseph Muscat is accusing the PN of being inconsistent in their lies (you can only lie consistently). It’s a short step away from Alice’s Wonderland. It’s not so much reading the news as deciphering it. After a while you really have to take a deep breath and wonder – but what is all this really about?
What do we learn from the leaks business? Not much really. We already knew that both our main political parties could number enough slime-balls among them to be able to throw a successful Back Stab Themed Party (no harm or pun intended). We learnt that at some point in the campaign someone in the nationalist party found out about JPO’s Mistra dealings and started a damage limitation exercise because the Labour party were onto the said dealings.
We learnt that the damage limitation exercise is what we saw unfold before our eyes – the hounding of Alfred Sant by watery eyed JPO. The PN provided him with a press card (Press Ethics? What Press Ethics?) they shuttled him around yelling at the Leader of the Opposition like a mad man. And now we have it on the authority of Gordon Pisani (PN Communications man) that the services of Daphne Caruana Galizia were enrolled in order to ghost write an article for the hapless dentist who in the meantime kept (according to the latter day version) lying through his teeth about the Mistra situation.
Now we don’t really care whether DCG is ghost writing per amor patriae (dulce et decorum est) or for mercenary remuneration (or we wouldn’t care had this actually not been denied many a time when the question was asked) – her work, her business, her rewards after all. After all we too share the immense fear of seeing Joseph Muscat elected to government come next election so we should keep mum about the fishy picture that is emerging here.
It’s hard really for the non-partisan observer to separate the wheat from the chaff. We’ve hardly begun to ask the questions actually. The problem is that no one has. The press are busy reporting allegations about leak and counter leak but fail to want to dig deeper. And when people like Daphne ask very pertinent questions .- such as was the RCC conversation that appeared on ONE News the result of an illegal phone tap – you cannot help but remember that this is a person who ghost writes for the spin machine of one party so there is always the suspicion of a tint of bias. Incidentally, the Super ONE spin on that conversation is one hell of a mindfu*k. Implika????
The Labour party is having a free ride on non-sequiturs, basing itself on the biggest non-sequitur of all: if the others are swimming in shit then we must be right. Joseph Muscat is on a roll sending irrelevant message after irrelevant message out to the electorate without even trying to fake any interest in real policy and real ideas. There they go again cracking stupid jokes about Gonzi’s Coalition with JPO and how this is about “Flimkien Kollox Possibli”. The Labour party was even unable to see the real purpose of this parliamentary recess and is still hoping that some new twist will happen that will precipitate the end of this government. They still think JPO is relevant. They still have no idea about how the constitution works and how governments are formed or fall. Yes, the Labour machine is still fuelled by ignorance.
Do you know who the biggest loser is? The biggest loser in all this is the voter. The more I speak to people the more I get the same reply. “U mhux kollox jibqa l-istess la jghaddi dan kollu. Flok buzillis wiehed ikun hemm iehor u xorta jien inhallas u nidghi“.
Well, at least our quoting Tommasi di Lampedusa millions of times in the past eight years might finally make sense.
Because yes, once the fireworks are over, once the cacophony dies down and the new die is cast then you realise that for all the main protagonists in this saga there is one thing that is more irrelevant than anything else – and that is you… the voter.
Or in the words of the Italian poet (yes, the Italian of Espresso, Panorama and Corriere della Sera):
Perché io sono io, e voi non siete un cazzo.
Accurate overview. Slime balls, ghost writers, ignorance and the depressing “u mhux kollox jibqa’ l-istess” which seems to have become written into the nation’s DNA via a cultural process. Let’s call it the Tomasi di Lampedusa meme. Essentially, though, it boils down to the fact that Boissevain’s system of patronage is very much alive and kicking, permeating absolutely everything public. Anyone who matters seems to inevitably get sucked into the vortex, as if there is no life and no relevance outside it. And here’s a final friendly challenge to j’accuse: had you actually been on the ground, navigating the ins and outs of everyday life nell’isola del voi non siete un cazzo, encountering the “u mhux kollox jibqa’ l-istess” line day in day out, your resistance may (I underline ‘may’) have been sapped some time ago…da questo punto di vista, meno male che il Ducato c’e!
Another thing which makes the political-intellectual scenario bleak is that there seems to be a more or less total absence of antibodies in the system which serve as important, respected and relevant counterweights. Those who could have played that role are either silent, in self-imposed exile or have been sucked in by the vortex. A parallel can be drawn with Italy. Berlusconi this and Berlusconi that, scandalo this and scandalo that…nevertheless there was always a “un’altra Italia” made up of a critical mass of journalists, writers, intellectuals and so on writing relevant articles, making good tv programmes, challenging, questioning…That “altra Malta” is just too sporadic, too one-man-band, too jaded.
Fakkartni f’din David:
“You sad pathetic man – see where you’ve brought us to
Our ideals die around us and all because of you
But the saddest cut of all –
Someone has to turn you in
Like a common criminal, like a wounded animal
A jaded mandarin
A jaded mandarin
Like a jaded, faded, faded, jaded, jaded mandarin”
Friendly variation on the well-known joke following the JC Superstar ditty posted above:
Q. X’inhi d-differenza bejn Jacques u Gesu Kristu?
A. Gesu Kristu ma jahsibx li huwa Jacques.
Tkun cajta tajba kieku jiena nahseb li jiena Kristu.Pero le.
Iktar Buddha bil-forom recenti tal-addomine.
The Buddha of (Luxembourgish) Suburbia