Sink me in a billabong

Our home-grown political soap opera is moving at such frenetic pace that I feel that it would be folly to attempt analysing it in any way as its twists, turns and gyrations have been, as far as I remember, unprecedented in this island where the sun shines a little too much on us, the happiest people in the world!

... nothing is logical in this land of petards and pastizzi...- Kenneth Zammit Tabona

They say a week is a long time in politics and, from last Friday, the day after Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando resigned from the Nationalist Party and I send in my article to the editor, and this Tuesday morning anything might have happened.

People are talking about hung parliaments and coalitions. I have, forgive me, not a clue who the PN government should or would be coalescing with at the moment. The Labour Party? Alternattiva Demokratika? Me? You? Or am I missing the wood for the trees and it happens to be none other than the maverick MP himself acting off his own bat; Dr Pullicino Orlando the independent?

Well “sink me in a billabong”, as our friends down under will say when at a loss for words. What a complete Hiroshima this man has made of the party he professed to love and believe in, thereby proving, as I suspected from day one, that revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

As this melodrama continues, it seems that the parliamentarians and politicos not forgetting the aficionados are ignoring the silent majority, which, since the slender PN electoral victory of 2008, marred as it was by tea parties in Mistra and further beleaguered by the battle for divorce and other controversies like Parliament, City Gate, the new power station, the bunker etc, has been observing all these shenanigans and goings on with a jaundiced eye and hoping that both the government and the opposition would come to their senses, stop playing politics and just get on with governing and administrating our country.

This should, by rights, not be too difficult. Boris Johnson does it for London, which I believe to be infinitely larger and more populated than Malta will ever be! Yet 60-something men and some women seem to be incapable of putting their squabbles behind them and working for the common good.

If they forgot all about us during these cut-throat battles, betrayals, double-crossings, recantations and cloak and dagger revelations it would have not been so bad. However, while all this sturm und drang takes place we are force-fed with endless streams of rhetoric, political incantations, jeremiads and stories that get taller and more incredible by the day. Recent history is turned on its head while not-so-recent history is manipulated to suit the political programmes of whomever it is who instigates them.

The upshot is that instead of having a slow, relaxed and enjoyable summer we are now perpetually glued to our TVs, iPhones, iPads, Androids and laptops not to miss the next move in the drama.

While the government and the opposition trade insults, I really fail to see why the opposition is getting involved and taking the backlash for things which have been perpetrated solely by the rebellious PN triumvirate.

I had admired Joseph Muscat’s openness with regard to the divorce issue when he refused to rise to the bait and did not have the PL taking an official stand against or for divorce but giving Labour MPs and, hence, its members and supporters carte blanche to follow their own opinions. This is what he should have done now too.

Just ignore the Pullicino Orlandos and Franco Debonos of this world and let them do what they have to do without getting involved for, sure as eggs are eggs, any whisper, any utterance about these purely internal rivalries within the PN will be interpreted as aiding and abetting rather like what had happened when Dom Mintoff decided to bring down his own party in 1998 and was given all “facilities” by the PN opposition. The backlash from that has not yet been lived down and, yet, the PL is doing precisely that with the difference that the three renegades have turned the tables on the PL as well as on their own party.

Remember what happened when there was the vote of no confidence involving Transport Minister Austin Gatt and Dr Debono, who had led the opposition into thinking that he would vote against, abstained instead.

I am, as a citizen of Malta, upset and disappointed at what is going on. It seems as if Maltese politicos and their aficionados are unable to muster any greater maturity and common sense than the local English and Italian supporters before, during and after that famous match a few Sundays back.

I was told that my comments about that game were tantamount to the comments of a football yob about Chopin, which I thought was very witty. However, if one compares Italy and England teams to the PL and the PN, the Italians won a penalty shootout after extra time during which the British did not allow them to score. After Italy won we were treated to the usual bacchanalia of carcades and online fawning about how brilliantly the Azzurri played whereupon I reiterated that the Brits either played just as brilliantly or, just as lousily, for, had it been otherwise, would not the Italians have scored half a dozen goals?

That to me seems pretty normal logic. But nothing is logical in this land of petards and pastizzi (cheesecakes) and I was told that I should stick to painting, which is what people usually tell me to do when I happen to hit a raw nerve. I will let a compliment like that, albeit backhanded, pass... again.