Pardon Sir, your posh is showing

The opposition are understandably keen to portray last Monday’s vote as yet another symptom of government ‘meltdown’. On their part, Nationalists argue that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Jesmond Mugliett are simply latter-day Franco Debonos. There is, in other words, broad consensus that Monday’s was, for better or worse, more of the same.

Richard Cachia Caruana is simply unfathomable, in a level of his own. Which, in an egalitarian society, is the worst sin of all- Mark Anthony Falzon

I disagree. I don’t think the Richard Cachia Caruana matter was more text in the old chapter or a new chapter in the same book. The Debono volume was (is?) written in the language of unhinged cannon and sulking. Whatever Pullicino Orlando’s and Mugliett’s private mullings and motives, this was different.

What happened on Monday tapped into a rich, ancient vein of in-party antipathy, to use a Christian word, towards Cachia Caruana. I remember talking to a Nationalist Party insider in 1998, a few weeks after the Party’s return to power. He had one and emphatically only one bad thing to say about Eddie Fenech Adami: he had put Cachia Caruana back on top.

The ‘evidence’ is anecdotal and disjointed and I have no way of knowing if it’s valid or not. In the circumstances it would be churlish to state anything as fact – I’m just reporting what I’ve heard. Cachia Caruana is said to be caustic and next-to-impossible to work with. It’s commonly believed that he wields his power as an absolute monarch would and with a singular disdain of other people’s self-respect.

That opinion is obviously strongest among the PN rank and file. It was also the root cause of Monday’s vote. Cachia Caruana is to Carm Mifsud Bonnici what lime is to ricotta. The two situations quite simply cannot be put on a par.

My reason for writing this has nothing to do with my opinion of Cachia Caruana. I’ve never met or spoken to him and for all I know he may be the gentlest and chummiest man on earth.

Nor have I made up my mind about the moral legitimacy or otherwise of Monday’s vote. I don’t care if he deserved what he got as a long-overdue ‘payback’, or if we’re all the poorer for having lost a fine public servant.

Both are ad hominen as far as I’m concerned – the first by way of attack and the second defence. The real question and one I’m ill-qualified to answer is whether or not he acted according to his office in this particular case.

I’m also aware that it’s hard to avoid the Schadenfreude that tickles our tummies when the mighty take a plunge. That’s a feeling I find shameful and counterproductive and I won’t indulge it. If I must, I’ll just say I’ve always thought it iffy that top-ranking public service and inner-circle partisanship should sit in the same skin. Then again, that’s a general point and not strictly relevant to my argument.

My reason for writing is elsewhere. I would argue that Cachia Caruana’s political persona was/is at odds with some of the deepest-seated cultural tenets of contemporary Maltese society. His image is of a haughty, distant, and frankly toffish untouchable.

So, was it all just a glorified spot of old-fashioned class hatred? I don’t think so. Take John Attard Montalto and Alex Sceberras Trigona. Both are serious pieces of posh by any standards. And yet they don’t come across as distant and aloof, as Cachia Caruana does.

The first may collect armorial charges and Capodimonte heirlooms but he is also into cruises, funny shirts, and oodles of bling. Sceberras Trigona is made of sterner stuff but I did overhear two University secretaries (he is a visiting lecturer there) the other day say how nice and no-frills he is to the administrative staff.

Patronising? An elaborate piece of posturing? Maybe or maybe not, but that’s not the point. Fact is that both Sceberras Trigona and Attard Montalto are seen as ‘minn tagħna’ (good sorts). Literally translated that means ‘one of ours’ and these two behave, and very convincingly too, as if they were just that.

In other words it’s not really about class in the sense of inherited social estate. Rather, it’s about class as performed by and built into a political persona. Cachia Caruana made his choice (or was it made for him?) many years ago and the upshot is that I’ve never heard anyone refer to him as ‘minn tagħna’. Since we’re at it, there’s another Maltese expression that helps me build my argument. I wrote some weeks ago that it is something of a national habit to say of people, no matter how critical we might be of their motions, that they are ultimately ‘imma orrajt ta’’ (‘alright really’). Again, the last thing most people would say of Cachia Caruana is that he’s imma orrajt ta’. He may come across as many things but not that.

Which is significant since the expression is one of those great levellers. It cuts everyone down to size, to whether they’re orrajt or not.

Contemporary Maltese society turns out to be fiercely egalitarian and anyone who takes arms against that would do well to decommission their friends and keep a very, very low profile. I think it was Jeremy Boissevain who said we don’t easily tolerate our elites.

The problem with Cachia Caruana was that he combined (successfully at that) a ubiquity in affairs of state with a masterclass in aloofness. His public face was inscrutable at the best of times and he never dropped his guard.

It occurred to me the other day that most of us don’t know what his voice sounds like. You could almost see the rarefied ether catch the light at times. Besides, given the language politics of this fair isle, it didn’t help that he is said to speak English most of the time.

Cachia Caruana is said to be arrogant by the people who work with him. That wasn’t the only cause of his undoing. Arrogance is a quality we can engage with. To most of us, Cachia Caruana is above that. He is simply unfathomable, in a level of his own. Which, in an egalitarian society, is the worst sin of all.

When Peter Serracino Inglott died, the obituaries said two things. The first spoke of his vast intellect and political shrewdness.

The second, equally if not more important, said he was one of us, someone you could walk up to and have a decent conversation with irrespective of your status. I’ve a sense that Cachia Caruana’s political obituary would look decidedly one-pronged by comparison.

mafalzon@hotmail.com