The Editorial carried by the Times on Thursday was a particularly good one, because it put an aspect of our political landscape into stark perspective.
Finally, it seems to have been noticed by the single most important component of our media machine that Dr Franco Debono is more interested in self-aggrandisement and – perhaps to put too fine a point on it – trying to impose himself on anyone who crosses his radar negatively than in anything else, to the point of excluding anything else.
Debono, in the eyes of the unknowing, had a few good points when he started gaining public attention, though even the shallow used to preface their remarks about him with the cop-out “but his methods are a bit too strong”. In fact, the knowing knew that this man was, and remains, a vulgar egocentric whose ideas lack depth, whose style and quality of expression betray the true levels of his intellectual capacity and whose general demeanour is condemnable in the extreme.
The fact is that Debono has become a total irrelevance, except for the type of person who enjoys bear baiting and poking sticks into beehives just for the fun of it. It is true that he might, if the whim takes him or if his inner rage, a severe reactive state that appears to condition his every action, gets fiercer, bring down the Government, but all that will do is render him even more of a nonentity than he is already, and anyway, it’s now a matter of months, one way or the other, to the elections.
It would probably be a mercy if the rest of the (admittedly less important) sectors of the media, especially those whose love of grinding their axes on the back of the Prime Minister overcomes them all the time, were to conclude that the grotesque Debono sideshow should now be consigned to the dustbin of history, even if they might think that it would appear to lack proper gratitude for all the amusement with which he’s supplied them.
I diverge with the same Editorial where it chides Dr Simon Busuttil for using “scare tactics” to give context to his decision to contest the elections. Busuttil, to my mind, put it succinctly and accurately: if Labour are elected, there will be a clear and present danger to the economy and our well-being.
An example will suffice.
On Thursday, during their Congress of the Panting for It (“it” being the chance to govern) another guideline was approved, presumably by show of hands. Energy tariffs, said The Leader, will be brought down without stealth taxes and without robbing Peter to pay Paul, by bringing into play “Efficient Energy Policies”.
Muscat is reputedly an educated man, he doesn’t use the back of an envelope to design a dry-dock (unlike his hero, Mintoff) and he knows (but does he?) that economies of scale in this country do not lend themselves to “Efficient Energy Policies” but does this stop him from spouting the platitude? Of course not, he even went on to talk about wind-farms, for Heaven’s sake, when these abominations have been discredited Europe-wide. Oh well, there’s always Sargas and John Dalli to swoop in to save him, come the day, I suppose.
And now I’m going to enjoy the rest of Independence Day, probably with an excellent salad at Mo’s in Victoria.