Author: Jacques René Zammit

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.

So he resigned. Not much to be surprised about there. It’s a miracle that the cohabitation had survived so long into the legislature but then again he has had his moments and the government has had to survive more than its fair share of confidence votes thanks to the likes of the newly resigned MP and his colleague Franco Debono. We now know for a fact that the PN election team were conned by the tantrum throwing dentist – and whether by force majeure for want of anything better they set about ghost writing articles and driving home the idea of JPO the victim until a day after the election.

Once the election was over they had a time bomb ticking in the house. Four years ago it was only the inner circle of campaign directors, executive members and spin consultants that knew of the big con. Then slowly JPO uncovered his cars. The more he went maverick the more it was clear that not all was united in the PN house. The divorce bill last year was one of the final straws so to speak. All the while their mouths stayed mum. The ticking bomb was left to tick. They could not do otherwise – the slim majority precluded them from kicking out the man who had garnered over 5,000 number one votes thanks to their hardy work. Damn.

Nobody spoke of government by coalition then even though it was always clear that the band of representatives flying the PN banner was anything but a unified party supporting the same ideas. Again, just look at the divorce vote and see what I mean. This was no coalition in fact. It was uncomfortable cohabitation. The couple was in trouble big time and domestic disagreements could only be kept quiet in order to give the outside impression of a united facade.

Coalitions arise after elections when two or more parties need to combine the number of seats they have in order to enjoy a majority in the house. Before they agree on a coalition they take a long hard look at their electoral programmes and see how much of each one will survive into the coalition. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is not in a coalition with the Nationalist Party. In his resignation letter he stresses that he will continue to work with the Nationalist party in order to implement the electoral programme. That would not make it a coalition. Worse still, JPO has already – repeatedly – operated outside the nationalist party’s electoral programme.

From the moment he conned the party’s intelligentia with his Mistra move to this day he has blatantly operated against the interests of the party he supposedly represented in parliament. That is not a coalition. That is a renegade, a rebel, a splinter – call it what you like but don’t call it a coalition.

Comparing the uncomfortable cohabitation between Gonzi’s PN and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to a coalition is either a petty example of political spin or a manifestation of crass political ignorance.

The comparison to a coalition is irrelevant.

You may think that I was wrong in the last post (The Last Interview) when I said that the relevance of JPO to the current political scenario is fading fast. The “rebel MP” is once again  sitting on top of the latest news items and the question that Times journalist Kurt Sansone asks is “Will rebel MP pull the plug?”

Well. I was not wrong at all. Pullicino Orlando’s relevance is directly related to the power he can wield to making or breaking the government. Kurt Sansone answers this himself thusly:

“If he does resign from the party but retains his parliamentary seat as an independent, the government would lose its one-seat majority. Although it would precipitate a political crisis, the impact is not immediate. Parliament is closed for the summer recess until October 1 and the government’s majority would have to be ascertained by a vote of confidence.”

My point exactly. A point I have been making ever since the Thursday executive vote banning the three rebel MPs from contesting the next election. The PN strategy is clear. Summer is for preparing the electoral onslaught.

Gonzi’s men knew that the slim majority could not survive far beyond October – and even if by some miracle of patchwork and self-denial they would have managed to drag to 2013 (as some believed Gonzi intended to do) they were aware that they would lose more points than gain should they pander to the tantrum throwing rebels.

Which is why parliament took the long recess. It will open up in time for the inauguration of the new buildings and the official declaration of an electoral campaign opening. Everything else is media speculation. As I said in an earlier post, what remains to be seen is whether Gonzi will hand the self-destruct button to JPO or Franco Debono by forcing a confidence vote. That way the blame/pride for bringing about the end of the legislature will fall clearly on a rebel MP.

Lesson in relevance number one: Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is irrelevant. Whatever he says or does from now on does not change anything in the dynamics of the approach to an election. Any remaining “scoops” he may provide will only serve to fuel the hungry media machine (hey… it’s summer) and Labour’s grateful politicians who will pick up anything so long as the focus is not themselves and the great emptiness that is their plans for government.