Labour, please let us know

So, after keeping the country guessing for so many months, Franco Debono finally dealt the blow to Carm Mifsud Bonnici.

Was this fair? Was it an expression of democratic zeal or was it an opportunistic lunge for fame and glory?

It’s about the opposition I’m talking here, incidentally, because the Debono aspect of the story is one that interests me not in the slightest any more. That has run its course. In the words of the song, he did what he did because he did what he did. Those aren’t the words of the song I’m thinking about but it’s too late in the evening to try to Google the lyrics.

No, to my mind it’s the opposition that needs to answer a few questions here.

Was their motion seriously meant to be taken as evidence of their love of justice, democracy, mom and apple pie or was it a coldly cynical hop, skip and jump onto the Debono bandwagon?

I have my thoughts on this and, given Labour’s record in the justice and democracy stakes, you’ll forgive me for sneering rather loudly at the thought that this was anything other than a piece of cynical opportunism.

Let’s consider the minister, now honourably resigned, that Labour chose to attack, this time in their breathless enthusiasm to make this country a better place, which latter phrase I assure you was difficult to write with my tongue in my cheek.

I like, in circumstances such as this, to look at the basics.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici’s portfolio at the material time included the judiciary, a famously easy body of men and women to exercise administrative power over, especially since Labour had contributed so conveniently a few years back to their conviction that they are supreme even in the administration of their function and not only in its exercise.

In other words, getting the judiciary to do anything is as easy as getting cats to walk in a parade, in the immortal phrase of Leo of West Wing fame.

He also had the police to run, a corps over whom it is almost invidious in a democracy for a politician to have power. God help a country that has a police force run by a politician, as He had to help ours not many years ago.

Attached to all of this good stuff was a monolithic administrative structure that, with all the goodwill in the world – and there was quite a bit of goodwill, to be fair – is as easy to turn as a supertanker at low speed.

Put all these together and you have a job that is horrendously difficult.

Could Dr Mifsud Bonnici have done a better job at it? Of course he could have, he’s only human. But, and it’s a very cogent but, did he do a bad enough job to deserve this treatment?

Of course not, he did no worse than many who came before him and, at least, he kept faith with the very same basic principles of separation of power that, to a pretty significant degree, had him hamstrung. Not a concept with which Labour’s Lil’Elves are overly familiar, that of the separation of powers, but it exists, it lives and breathes, though, in days gone by, there were those who tried to throttle it. Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, take a bow.

So, all in all, there is good reason to say that Dr Mifsud Bonnici was harshly and unfairly treated and that Labour acted in a manner that was shameful and that shows them up as craven cynics.

So, now what?

There’s a vote of confidence called for Monday, giving us a few more days of inane blathering from the Lil’Elves about majorities and wills of the people and suchlike concepts that are only resorted to by Labour when it suits the opportunity that presents itself.

Will the government carry the day come Monday? Your guess is as good as mine and I’m not about to put any folding money on the outcome, though, at the time of writing, it seems that Joseph Muscat will have to wait a bit longer before he capers joyfully up the steps to Castille.

I put the above together – at least in rudimentary form – while listening to a form of music that took rock as its foundation, though the overlay of strings and brass combined with a sound level and quality that bordered on the uncomfortable to make the evening not entirely successful. In its individual parts, rather like the curate’s egg, the People’s Voice Concert was good, though.

There was something Freudian about the description of Labour’s anthem for the 1996 election, The Winds of Change, which was put down as having been “warped” by them for the campaign, perhaps reflecting the greater irony about the song originally having been about the implosion of socialism.

It was a pity, too, that one of the best home-grown political songs wasn’t played, presumably because it’s got lost. I have a tape of it somewhere, Lord knows where. It’s Il-Ħamsa t’Ottubru (October 5). I’m talking about, an acoustic number recalling that date in 1977 when a student protest outside Castille was broken up by the thugs of the regime masquerading as police officers. I suppose Mr Mintoff’s apologists will render him blameless as usual, as he had just scuttled up the steps to his office, ignoring the medical students chained in protest against the railings.

But I forget, it’s now that we’re living in a dictatorship, not then.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20