The emperor's new clothes

What on earth was the President of Malta doing at the televised fundraising event of the Nationalist Party? In order to test my reaction to the sight of him there, I have quizzed a number of Nationalist friends on the matter and their reaction was uniform disapproval.

Strange to say, there appears to have been no comment at all about the matter in the press. Is it because the President of Malta is above criticism? Is Net TV also above reproach? It was particularly shocking for me because I happened to be zapping through the TV channels and also ran across the Labour Party fundraising effort going on at the same time. Was the President going to visit them too?

It feels doubly obscene that political parties hold their fundraising orgies at Christmas time. With a second austerity budget hitting everybody's pocket just when we would like to have something extra for the children's toys, it seems very odd that the political parties choose just now to ask their supporters to dig deep inside their pockets. I find it amazing that they have the cheek.

In both instances the nostalgia and party, party, party talk gave me goose bumps. Do these people realise that thousands of infidels like me run into their partisan orgies from the comfort of their homes? You don't have to be non-PN to be disgusted by the sight of an MP piling wads of liri into the Prime Minister's arms. Do these people have a shred of dignity left?

Of course I am free to zap away and I almost invariably do so. Sometimes I become fascinated by the horror of the thing. Catching sight of President Fenech Adami at the PN fundraising festival was one such occasion. I was glued to the set. Imagine the Queen associated with such an event organised by the Labour Party in Britain!

Can anyone imagine Carlo Azeglio Ciampi spliced to a Forza Italia event to raise money for the party at Christmas? Not even Silvio Berlusconi would think of using a video clip of the President of the Republic in a party fundraiser. Can anyone imagine any such occurrence anywhere except Malta and nobody squeaking about it? I could not help thinking that there is something profoundly pathological about it all.

A friend told me she was stunned to realise that the building she was shown on Net TV was not the new hospital but the new party HQ. She was so annoyed that she decided she would not let the PN have a single cent. She would normally contribute enthusiastically. What on earth do they need such a mammoth structure for?

I had the same sensation when it was first shown several months ago while the collapse of Finanzi fis-sod (sound finances) was fresh on everybody's mind. It did not seem at all clever to show it. Do these people imagine that the general population approves this investment? They appear to be insulated from the rest of us by a ring of some thousands of fanatics.

The extent of this detachment from reality was brought home to me when a Forza Italia exponent boasted that his party was administered by no more than 57 people. Apparently his leftist rivals have a more burdensome administration. What occurred to me was the PN statement that they employ 120 full time employees and almost twice as many part-timers. The Malta Labour Party appears to come second on this but not too far behind. They both denounce the fact that the civil service is over-manned. The Greens give them a damn good run for their money without any full time employees and no Mother of all HQs.

Do they realise that the rest of us are watching? Trundling out Dr Fenech Adami to stand beside the Prime Minister in the fundraiser was truly pathetic. It seemed pretty evident that the party was not confident of loosening purse-strings using the new icon alone: Dr Fenech Adami was used to jog the memory of the faithful. It was an admission that Lawrence Gonzi is not yet enough.

Have they clicked yet that Dr Fenech Adami is the President of Malta and not their private tool? Investigating further I have discovered that Dr Fenech Adami was not present at the fundraiser in the flesh. It was a recording from last year's orgy. He was used and abused by Net TV. It should be an offence. Lese majesté? I was fooled, perhaps thousands of other zappers too. Has the President been stirred to complain?

Was it not this time last year that civil service Christmas parties were cancelled? Did we really save enough from forfeiting a few sandwiches that we could afford Dar Malta only a few months later? Who was the bright spark who came up with the idea of a new Parliament just ahead of a budget that raises the price of kerosene and bus fares? It is part of the let-them-have-cake attitude which some PN protagonists and PN apologists appear to have adopted. It is implicit in their arguments and in their defence of clearly regressive policies.

Every passing day we have some sign that the present administration is suffering from the immortality syndrome which beset the final years of the Labour administration in the 1980s. The zany occurrences of the 15th and 16th years in office may have been even more spectacular but seem to have a common cause. Imminent collapse, the untenability of that administration was palpable - apparently to everyone but to those clinging to office.

Several Cabinet members voted against the 1987 50 per cent+1 amendment to the Constitution apparently inebriated by long exposure to power. They believed that they could win again, that there was no alternative to their rule and that it would not matter if they won by another defeat of democracy.

Today's Nationalist administration appears to believe that they can ignore the Greens' 9.3 per cent result in the European Parliament elections. Almost a 10th of the electorate have expressed their support for another kind of politics. The failure of this government to react to this changed reality is a measure of their state of denial. Where else in the democratic world would such a massive change at the grassroots not bring about an institutional change which ack-nowledges the new reality?

All that has happened is that the Greens have graduated from being a nuisance to being a threat. Not a threat to democracy but a threat to the party interests of their rivals. The closer we get to changing the cosy game which our rivals want to keep to themselves, the tighter they try to exclude us. It has become obvious to everybody, to everybody except to those who imagine that such nonsense can work.

It is not the Greens who are a threat to our obsolete political system but a very wide swathe of the population that has freed itself from the blind loyalties of the past. Almost twice as many as those who voted Green in the EP elections refused to vote at all. It is a massive wave which demands change. Denial only makes the change more likely. Dr Fenech Adami's presence by video clip at the PN fundraiser is evidence of the profound state of denial of the Nationalist Party. Viewed from the outside it seems simply outrageous.

Combining explicit Green support with the dissidents there are 77,000 of us who realise that the emperor has no clothes. Together we make up 25 per cent of all those eligible to vote. At the next sermon on values we could all burst out laughing and bring the house down. In 2003 we rammed the barrier before us and cracked it very badly. In 2004 a slight push left a great gaping hole in it. More and more of us have been walking through ever since. None of us want to go back to the politics of the past. Soon it will not matter whether or not our rivals realise the need for institutional change. Reality will have caught up with those in denial.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt