In the play put up by the Local Luvvies about the cross-dressing Jew-baiter who eventually finds true love in a can, there is a line that resonated with me the first time I read it. The dark-skinned one lets it be known that he will “not jump with the common masses”, defining the basic truth about democracy forever.

Verily, the noble Moorish gent was right, just because a large number of people put their ‘x’ against a certain box doesn’t mean that this is actually the right box. That said, faut de mieux and since people just don’t seem to want to accept once and for all that I’m always right, democracy will have to do.

But the people who prevail at the polls should always bear in mind that just because they won, and won handsomely, even twice, this doesn’t mean that they are entitled to behave as if they have been anointed on descent from the Mount, bearing tablets with the eternal truth inscribed thereon.

Incidentally, a full school year has gone by since Evarist Bartolo was enthroned as minister of education and, as far as I can see, of those other tablets there is no sign as yet.

No doubt, he of former rodent-like attributes (it is said, with the same level of authority that claims I was Beck, that he was Marija l-Maws in KullĦadd, Labour’s antithesis to journalism), will tell us that it wasn’t his fault, he relied on his officials, it needs further study, the unions are against it, it’s the University’s fault and anyway, who needs examination results.

Remember, Labour got an enormous advantage at the polls and repeated this at the MEP elections, so just shut up now.

It is often said that it is by the little things that you shall know them, them, in this instance, being our esteemed and honourable Cabinet ministers, with whom, it used to be but is no longer, said buck stops.

In fact, it is not only by the little things that you can tell that many of them are not up to the job.

It is not only by the little things that you can tell that many of them are not up to the job

A good barometer of the extent to which the jolly old government is doing things right, of course, can be discerned by taking a look at the tone of opinion expressed in the columns. Don’t take me as a fr’instance, I’ve long been a running dog lackey of the Nationalist Party, paid from their limitless coffers to live a life of such luxury that I don’t need to work or ply a trade in order to keep the wolf from the door.

No, consider the columnists who used to take such delight in being down on the PN government, attributing all the world’s ills to it.

When not busy arguing the toss on religious issues that fail to move many except himself, one such is now clearly having second, third and possible 51st thoughts about how appropriate it was to advocate change so eagerly.

This particular gent recently was particularly exercised by the rumour that Joseph Muscat’s government was thinking about putting off local council elections for “a few years, to save the populace the expense and fatigue of having to vote, poor things”. Given that Muscat’s predecessor but two (the late, and only partly lamented, Dom Mintoff) had shown us precisely what value he gave to elections in 1981, was this move particularly surprising, when you think about it?

Someone who lets her opinion be known stridently, by dint of the fact that her every whinge had column inch after column inch dedicated to it, is now starting, though perhaps with less of a decibel-level than heretofore, to make it known that Muscat’s government is not the salvation of all things environmental.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

Given, again, the evidence of history, shades of Lorry Sant an’all, was this development, and I use the word purposely to evoke the lobby whose sun has risen and no mistake, so surprising? Is it not now time for the environmentalists to reflect on the fundamental truth that it is truly important to be careful what you wish for, lest you get it, in the neck this time?

When the Nationalists came to power in 1987, they had to roll back the years of mismanagement (and that is a charitable characterisation) of foreign affairs. They did so with honour, even up to the dying days of his administration, when, despite the distractions of that, remember him, Debono, fellow, Lawrence Gonzi carried himself and the country with honour during the North African crisis.

Can the same be said of our current lords and masters?

Our Foreign Minister, bless ’im, gave such an incisive analysis of the situation in the Ukraine that the West was won over and almost elevated him to the position of oracle. He followed this up with a truly stupefying level of insight into the situation in Libya, echoed even to this day (I’m writing this on Wednesday) by the government’s special adviser about everything, John Dalli, who tells us on page one of The Malta Independent that he was “right about Libya and Gaddafi”. Well, yes, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

So perfect in his analysis was George Vella, so filled to brimming with competent officers is his ministry, that they had to recall a suspended diplomat to rescue Martin Galea, about whose kidnap the minister saw fit to tell us only a week or so after it happened.

Oh well, all’s well that ends well and Galea was welcomed on the tarmac by no less a panoply of the great and good than a delegation consisting in the Prime Minister, the Minister for Fuzzy Catering and the Foreign Minister himself.

Photo ops only deceive the common masses and get only them jumping for joy, to hark back to Venice’s Moor, the rest of us can see past the flashing bulbs and see the lurking incompetence.

It’s not only the big things, though.

It’s not an enormous sin that the Prime Minister’s head honcho, Keith Schembri, uses elements of the trappings of power to elevate himself from among the great unwashed and be whisked through the hassle of landing from Sicily by an air-conditioned car. In the greater scheme of things, who would care but when this sort of mild arrogance is cherried onto the “L’etat, c’est moi” cake from which Muscat and his people are feasting daily, it becomes symptomatic of a greater malaise.

When exam results, even those which have been handed in by lecturers who don’t believe in depriving students of them, long-awaited as they are, are delayed, it’s not of earth-shattering importance, except to the anxious students. But when taken as a piece of the evidence against a case for attributing competence and good administration to the relevant ministry, it becomes quite a telling mark.

That the police are slow, at least apparently, to prosecute someone who is alleged to be a wife-thumper, is not something that is unheard of, far from it, but when the alleged perpetrator is someone who holds significant office in the ministry of the minister allegedly responsible for the force, can us poor commentators fail to be sorely tempted to put two and two together and come up with the obvious answer?

There’s more, it need hardly be said, that gives us a clear picture of the expertise and deftness of touch that Muscat and his ministers deploy daily.

Even ministers who have inherited sectors that were in good nick, such as finance and tourism, find themselves wondering how the devil they’re going to cope when the momentum fizzles out and when their key people, their chief executives and the others on whom they have to rely, decide that they don’t want to remain associated with the problems that are looming.

The common masses can continue to hum the “as long as it’s not GonziPN and those bloody foreigners” all they like but, sadly, the rest of us will have to knit right along with them.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20

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