When votes are counted

Summer is almost over and our esteemed politicians, and their wannabe colleagues, are gearing up to start the daily round of sound and fury signifying not an 'eck of a lot again.

It's about time too, frankly, because the fag of provoking the Lil'Elves and the blinking hunters, to say nothing of various assorted racists, is getting a bit much. As I mused in my blog a few days ago, it's a bit like playing for cheap laughs.

Be that as it may, let's take a look at the political scene, then.

Joseph Muscat, new-found hero of the Labour Party, is being a good lad, doing his level best not to put his size nines into it and being helped in this by the fact that, it being summer and all, the media tends to imitate the rest of the country by going into estivation. Mr Gates' meisterwerk refused to accept that word, but that's his problem.

One has to assume that at some point in the not-too-distant future, the Muscat feller will grace the House with his presence, assuming someone will make way for him. The ways and means that will be found for that happy event to come about is for his party to sort out - there've been enough theories flown around to make my tuppence-worth irrelevant.

A crack by the Alternattiva, or Greens or whatever the national conscience calls itself, caught my eye. They want a national quota established so that if they get enough votes on a national level, they will get a seat or however many that would imply in the House.

Whether this is or is not a good idea is debatable: would you want Prof. Arnold Cassola and his merry men and women to hold the balance of power in their sweaty palms?

I'm not too sure about that, to put it bluntly. I'm sure many members of the chattering classes, particularly all those who before the election were going on and on and on about how it was about time the Nationalists got what was coming to them, would leap up with gusto to bellow a resounding "yes" but that's hardly a recommendation in itself.

Quite the contrary, actually.

I've always debated whether the function of the more idealistic among us is really to get down and dirty with the big beasts, but that debate is superseded by the bleak fact that, during the last election, they did just that. So they can't grumble now about the said beasts closing ranks against them.

Which I'm sure they will, given that the poor showing of the Alternattiva at the polls will have given the people who work these things out in Pietà and Ħamrun the comfort they need to work out that this lot are pretty irrelevant.

And it will be no use, I think, for the Alternattiva to do well in the upcoming MEP contest, because even if they do (which is far from a given) everyone knows that the MEP elections are as relevant to the national equation as the local council ones.

The problem with these marginal parties being given a bite at the cherry is that the less stable among them start getting delusions of grandeur.

Consider, if you will, this choice snippet from Dr John Zammit, who commented that "The Alleanza Liberal-Demokratika Malta totally agrees with Alternattiva Demokratika for a national threshold of 2.5 per cent of first count votes and hope that the government will impliment this immediately to have a truely democratic country and the small parties will have their share in the Maltese Parliament, especially the Alternattiva Demokratika who represent the greens in the European Parliament and us who represent the ALDE/ELDR (Liberals) the third largest political group".

I've cut and pasted it directly.

Note, please, the notion that this gentleman seems to have, that it is the government that decides these things. I wonder what the MLP would have to say about that, for Heaven's sake.

Hasn't Dr Zammit taken even a cursory glance at the Constitution and our electoral laws?

He goes on to preen a bit, after characterising the Alternattiva as "representing the greens in the European Parliament", which is a particularly strange assertion, since they don't, actually, have a member in that august institution, by associating his motley crew with the Liberals, which he calls the "third largest political group", without specifying whether he means in Malta or in Europe.

Having read what the guy has written, do you want there to be the slightest risk that people like John Zammit, who, I am sure, is a fine fellow and all that, to come anywhere near a seat in the House?

His party clocked up what, a few dozen votes and still he arrogates to himself the right to give us all the impression that he forms part of a real political grouping with clout and bottom, not to mention gravitas.

Oh well, I suppose it's all pretty moot, really, since I can't see the big beasts giving up any of their hard-won territory.

And so to end, you'll recall that last summer I waxed pretty lyrical about Il-Kantra, the beach-side restaurant at the Ta' Ċenċin Gozo? Well, times change and all that: we dropped in for a pre-lunch g&t last Sunday to be greeted by a pretty grotty level of cleanliness and a gentleman who, on being asked whether a glass of something refreshing was anywhere within the bounds of feasibility, mumbled about the waiter not being there yet and, anyway, he didn't know what time he was coming.

And there the matter stood, with us slinking off to Xerri l-Bukkett and a much better welcome, resolving not to bother again in the immediate future.

imbocca@gmail.com

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