Parties’ woodworm and rats

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind – Jim Morrison.

The so-called Fourth Estate is not there for the taking- Austin Sammut

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who moulds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws – Abraham Lincoln.

I am back in action after some weeks. To be sincere, I have been and still am so disillusioned with local politics and the people who purport to run them, right across the board, that I lost my muse.

Time and again, I was due to submit my humble contribution to this newspaper. Week after week I had prepared the points I intended to write about, as I am wont to do. But when the time came, I suddenly lost any urge or interest to do so. Because things are truly despicable and not worth the time and effort.

Now I have decided to bounce back. For how long is to be seen.

And now to the headline. Be fair and honest with yourselves. Take just five seconds off and assign the headline names to the right parties. Yes you’re right.

Never in the history of the Nationalist Party has there been such disarray. Its various components are eating themselves up and eating into the very woodwork that is their structure and their noble historical credentials. It is very much a question of self-destruction.

Notwithstanding the irresponsible and disloyal becoming of the three renegade musketeers, the problem and the woodworm go much further than that. It is unfortunate that a party that has, over the last 25 years, brought Malta out of the dark ages to the very forefront of modern times should end up like this.

The party structure has been severely weakened. There are no people with a stature, astuteness and vigour as we had grown used to ever since 1977. Ok, we have brought in the “old guard” of Austin Gatt and Richard Cachia Caruana and Joe Saliba, but, sometimes, there is a limit to how many years a team can play successfully.

It is exactly here that the root of all the present troubles seems to be (and I have written about this before). Has the PN opened up to fresh faces and new ideas outside the inner circle? I fear not. It has been useless searching for new talent from among people with the same ideas, mentality and closed-minded conservatism.

I have written many times that the PN can bounce back, but with no positive developments having been reported within the party along the years, it is now too late. It is only the PN senior hierarchy that is to blame.

Before going on to the second part of my headline – the “rats” – I will deal with the very meaningful quotes I started with. I was inspired in reproducing these by the central theme of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s speech in Parliament, as a prelude to his overthrowing of Mr Cachia Caruana.

He expounded a theory that he holds about a plot hatched by Mr Cachia Caruana to unseat him from Parliament. At the centre of this plot, he claims, is a journalist or journalists. I must refer Dr Pullicino Orlando to the above quotes. The eternal struggles between politicians and the media, with spin doctors taking a central role, albeit recruited by prime ministers and governments, must be unknown to Dr Pullicino Orlando, or are they? For the truth is that journalists do not need Mr Cachia Caruana or anyone, for that matter, to pressure them or even persuade them to attack anyone, particularly a politician, as is Dr Pullicino Orlando, who has erred seriously.

A serious media, including independent journalists, as opposed to the lackeys we are used to in the party media, makes its own judgements. The so-called Fourth Estate is not there for the taking. It is politicians like Dr Pullicino Orlando who fear it.

The marauding rats are obviously found in the Labour Party. Its leader and the people in his “movement”, many of them old tried rats indeed, spend their time scurrying around from one corner to another, attempting to sniff up something or other. Sometimes it’s Franco Debono, sometimes it’s Dr Pullicino Orlando and, on occasions, since the smell is not so pungent, it is Jesmond Mugliett.

The moment they capture their prey, they plan how to use it as bait. A motion is drafted on the basis of their prey’s perspectives and views and moved in Parliament.

The rate of success has been impressively high. But is this a responsible way of doing politics? Do these tactics give the credibility required to an aspiring Prime Minister and alternative government? Do they not remind us of the bad old days, which have also been called glorious (sic) by the old rats of the 1970s and 1980s who surround the new great leader?

All this being said, I hope readers will now understand why I have become so disillusioned all round.