Some years ago I spent several months living and working in Mumbai (Bombay). Not generally too keen on Bollywood, a shortage of options often found me munching masala popcorn at some or other of the city’s many beautiful art deco cinemas.
It hadn’t been long since tensions between India and Pakistan had escalated into all-out war in the mountains of Kargil, and anti-Pakistan feeling was palpable everywhere in the city. Cinemas were no exception, not least since audiences had to sit through several minutes of hawkish government propaganda before the trailers even started.
It was easy to be misled by the cheers and clapping. Many Indians privately told me that, even if they thought India was right over Kargil, they found the propaganda nauseating. One of the reasons I agreed was that the anti-Pakistan slots were an intrusion. Cinemas on Saturday evenings were for watching films, I felt, and I had no wish to season the experience with a spot of warmongering.
Malta is not currently at war over a disputed range of mountains, which leaves us with harrowing accounts of the difficult passes and blizzard-swept slopes our politicians have to traverse in the course of their attempt on the summit of everlasting national happiness and greatness.
The wordy pomp is entirely intentional. It is, in fact, as nothing compared to the government spectacle and propaganda that have become such staple fare. Take two examples:
It is not possible to watch anything on Maltese television these days without having to sit through several minutes at a time of triumphalist spots about the greatness of the Budget.
They take the form of short stories of hardworking and honest Maltese people (loving couples, usually, as indeed they all are) whose lives are about to be completely transformed by the benevolence of government’s vision. The future is bright, we’re assured, and that is why it all ends with smiles all round and a big hug to the offspring (baby Kaya, normally, strongly expected to vote Labour in 2028).
The actors are all draped in a safe pastel smart-casual and the whole thing is bathed in the soft light of hope and optimism. The narration is in a soothing hearty voice, the kind you find on adverts for food on Italian television.
There’s an uncanny resemblance to Chinese propaganda posters from the Chairman Mao era. I’ve the Taschen book on the topic and I have to pinch myself every time I flip through it. It’s the same tinpot-Turner light, safe-looking people, and saccharine smiles.
The second example is that blessed tent in front of the Palace, and what goes on inside it. We sort of got an idea of the latter when minister Manuel Mallia made his grand entrance last week to cries of “Manuel! Manuel!”.
‘A hero’s welcome’, as Times of Malta put it, and indeed I can think of quite a few people to whom Mallia would appear a hero. Let’s just say they’re not the kind of people you might see on a Budget 2015 spot.
I find it astonishing that we’ve come to accept that government needs constantly to publicise its greatness to the people who elected it
That aside, it’s obvious that the tent is there purely for propaganda purposes. Tents originally appeared in Maltese politics as part of an electioneering road show (‘taħt it-tinda’), or in places such as the Floriana granaries where there were no other covered areas. To pitch a tent in the middle of Valletta looks silly, to say the least. That tent is not going anywhere, nor is there a shortage of safe roofs in the city.
Only the tent has nothing to do with mobility, or shelter. It’s there purely as a symbol of government openness and accessibility – ‘Gvern li Jisma’ (a government that listens), as the slogan goes.
It’s all based on a piece of rubbish rhetoric about politicians being at one, as opposed to being out of touch, with the people. I can just about see how a dictator like Nicolai Ceauşescu, holed up in his vast People’s House, might have cut himself off from the people.
The model doesn’t apply to a democratically-elected politician in a tiny island. The hero minister, for one, would probably know more than I do about being at one with the people. In his case, the walls of the tent appear very flimsy and translucent indeed.
In any case, the official reason for the tent doesn’t work. Maltese politicians don’t need to hold public consultations in tents, simply because they’re so accessible and generally physically present. (Most Maltese people will have at some point seen, and probably spoken to, a Prime Minister.) Make no mistake, that tent is a propaganda vehicle.
The same can be said of the Budget 2015 spots. The official reason, of course, is information. Only information doesn’t normally come bathed in the light of a rosy-fingered Labour dawn. Nor does it lead up to slogans like ‘Nippremjaw il-Bżulija’. (Yet another one I’m afraid; when slogans come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.)
I find it astonishing that we’ve come to accept that government needs constantly to publicise its greatness to the people who elected it. The spots, and the tents, and the billboards, are really an unwanted intrusion into our lives. I, for one, wish to eat my masala popcorn in peace.
mafalzon@hotmail.com