Sam Maverick and heavy cargo

This government’s real problem is not in Parliament. This government’s real problem is outside Parliament. It’s out here. It’s in the whole of Maltese society.

This government’s real problem is outside Parliament- Mario Vella

Granted, it must be very stressful for Lawrence Gonzi to deal with at least one maverick member of his parliamentary group and one could not expect otherwise in a Parliament where the government enjoys a majority of only one seat. It is, however, infinitely easier to manoeuvre one’s way around that maverick member than to prevent thousands from losing confidence in the governing party only a few months before an election.

Now, my good old Oxford English dictionary tells me that “maverick” was already being used towards the end of the 19th century to mean a “masterless person, one who is roving and casual”. It also tells me, however, that the word appears to have originated a couple of decades earlier in the United States.

One Samuel A. Maverick, a civil engineer, accidentally owned unbranded cattle in Texas around the middle of the century. Hence, the usage in US cattle breeding districts of “maverick” to refer to “a calf or yearling found without an owner’s brand” (2nd edition, Vol.1, p.1220).

Unbranded calfs were, of course, great news for what Americans call “rustlers” and Australians “duffers”.

It would be surprising if, very early on in this saga, Dr Gonzi or his aides had not asked for a psychological profile of that member of the House they consider as the principal maverick. They will also have sounded out as many as possible of the man’s colleagues, professional and political, friends of divers vintages and possibly relatives, with a view to determining if this particular maverick was in any danger of being rustled by the Labour Party.

Dr Gonzi will have surely been advised that this maverick was not the sort that changes sides. They will have reminded him that a stray calf ultimately yearns for the maternal home even if there may be plenty of old cracked china in there that it wants to smash to pieces.

Dr Gonzi will also have considered what the PL’s intentions in this case might be. Had the PL any interest in duffing this maverick? Dr Gonzi may have come to the conclusion that, whatever the inclinations of this “masterless person”, the PL did not contemplate such a scenario precisely because a maverick is a maverick and will not fit into a team, into any team.

Moreover, the current occupier of the Auberge de Castille is certainly shown the PN’s own survey results and knows that, all things being equal, Joseph Muscat’s advance into what was traditonally considered as the Nationalist Party’s exclusive social territory does not depend on what a member of Parliament might or might not do.

And, yet, Dr Gonzi will also by now have realised that Dr Muscat is not the naïve young man that a few aging PN advisers continue to say he is.

Doubts, doubts, doubts... hardly what the embattled incumbent needs right now.

Right now, the incumbent needs to look outside Parliament where the trouble really lies. Political mavericks are merely the symptom, not the underlying cause of the disintegration process that afflicts PN’s social support base.

You can avoid taking certain motions to the vote in Parliament. You can manoeuvre around certain individuals and attempt to make deals with others but nothing of the sort will block the accelerating process of estrangement between the governing party and those social groups that it traditionally considered as its captive political market. It takes decades to build such a power base but once a party cuts itself off from it, the rips and lacerations are not sewn up and repaired in a few months or even years. The healing takes even longer.

What must be hurting Dr Gonzi even more than all this is the fact that the harder he tries to reach out to those social groups that the PN has alienated from itself over the almost uninterrupted quarter of a century that it has ruled the country, the further these groups retreat from him. It is as if last minute attempts to make up for lost time make things worse.

Last minute appeals, buzzwords and slogans come across to those that have been repeatedly hurt and ignored as shrill and artificial, as not authentic and sincere. Why only now, they ask, peeved and resentful.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the PN’s campaign strategists are getting this sort of feedback. There is, however, some doubt that Dr Gonzi is being briefed about this feedback.

Or perhaps he is but there is nothing he can do about it at this stage. The ship he is meant to command is heavy with a cargo of attitudes, of habits, of self-perceptions, of myths, of rhetoric, of questionable practices, of networks of friends of friends, of obligations and of things one prefers not to speak about.

The bilges are full of muck, a gooey stinking mixture of the blinding arrogance of the incorrigible and the paralysing feeling of hopelessness that has gripped the rank and file. It is a cargo accumulated, as we have already noted, over almost 25 years, practically a generation. With the hold full of such a heavy cargo, the ship will not turn easily.

Dr Vella blogs at http://watersbroken.wordpress.com .