Twilight of the gods

To err is human...to forgive, divine! This is one of the most hackneyed quotes in the history of literature attri­bu­ted to Alexander Pope the English poet, author of the satirical Rape of the Lock.

We forget at times that we are human and at times like this, election time, all forgiveness or understanding is thrown out of the window in a battle without quarter. While the fracas of the oil scandal unfolds and like a whirlpool draws in more and more people into its fatal vortex, other ancillary ones are being hurled like Wotan’s flaming balestras from camp to camp while the electorate collectively swivel their heads at our potential leaders as if at a men’s final at Wimbledon. Some of us are sick and tired of it all, many are bored stiff and even more are put off by the continual slanging matches that our political class has descended into.

...Life and circumstances have dealt a very unfair hand to Lawrence Gonzi- Kenneth Zammit Tabona

We are all human. We all make mistakes. We are not gods. We can but try. But when you boil it down the result is ludicrous. As it appears that there are far more people than I thought who regard election time as if it were some World Cup final, with endless amounts of extra time and days upon days of penalty shootouts, it is obvious that all this obfuscates the real issues at stake and what we are left with is a strong sense of disenchantment.

Far from merely regarding the EU as a convenient gravy-train which it is should one learn how to play the game by Berlaymont rules, I had always hoped that the fraught and stressful elections that people of my vintage had been subjected to since childhood would become a thing of the past. In the run-up to EU membership, ironically, what many people hoped was that the 1981 situation would never again be repeated, with six fraught years of boycott and infighting that did no one any good.

It was in fact Eddie Fenech Adami who preached reconciliation in those years and with that battle cry, clinched the election of 1987. From that time to 1996 the word reconciliation was still a byword and to people of my ilk became a way of life. The 1996 to 1998 Labour stint in power was an eye opener. Alfred Sant tried to emulate Fenech Adami but was unable to govern as he wished because of a recalcitrant backbencher and had to call an election which he lost. Ten years on he still headed the Labour Party and lost the 2008 election by a whisker. We could have learned a few vital lessons from all this: the first is that one cannot cling to power in aeternum as power corrupts and diverts the democratic process; the second is that should you have internal dissent you should either scotch it immediately or turn to the polls; and the third is that once you are defeated you must resign and reconcile yourself to the fact that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

It seems that the PN is following in the footsteps of the pre-2008 PL almost to the letter. Why?

Life and circumstances have dealt a very unfair hand to Lawrence Gonzi. It has not been easy. Internal dissent within government ranks has been nothing short of alarming. Compared to the seismic convulsions caused by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono, the late Dom Mintoff’s disagreements in 1997 pale into insignificance. Was Sant right after all to call an election and lose it? Was it better to hang on to power with your own MPs speaking their minds in Parliament accusing you of being an exclusive oligarchy and goodness knows what else? What was the effect of all this on the electorate?

This period of history still requires more objective critical analysis for us to know this. Already, since the divorce issue we have just heard Gonzi say that, after all the storm and stress leading to the referendum and its aftermath, the people of Malta chose well! Then why, pray, did he spend €4 million on a referendum? Maybe because those €4 million generated turnover in other more sluggish areas of the economy, but now if we have another referendum about spring hunting, another about gay marriage, another about IVF and yet another about goodness knows what else, what on earth are our MPs going to spend their time doing in our spanking new Parliament? Twiddling their thumbs?

It is extraordinary how since 2008 when he was elected Leader of the Labour Party, Joseph Muscat immediately started talking of reconciliation and a Malta for all; uncannily echoing the same refrain as that preached assiduously by Fenech Adami in 1987 when he, Joseph Muscat, was still a nipper at my college! He is in fact a product of that particular period which by all accounts was a golden age in our post-colonial history.

This is why we have to ensure Malta remains a fully functioning democratic country wherein nobody, but nobody, remains ensconced in power for too long as it is politically unhealthy.

I am in fact very surprised that the PN has never once mentioned that it intends to be a government for all and that worries me. Maybe this oligarchy thing is not such a myth after all. We are a tiny nation with a population size of that of a small Nile city nobody has ever heard of called Asyut and yet here we are in a cutthroat life and death struggle of an election that has gone on far, far too long for its own good.

May it pass quickly.