Whatever the results of the inquiry into the shooting incident involving the Home Affairs Minister’s driver, this is a watershed moment for Labour, and a very bad one at that. It is the beginning of the end, no matter how long it will still take to get there. This is Richard Nixon’s Watergate being relived in our miniscule island.
Like in the original 1970s Watergate in the US that brought a president down, Malliagate started off with a cover-up attempt that went haywire. As with Watergate, our local version began with a trickle that turned into a cascade. The cover-up is now a scandal with tentacles reaching up all the way to Castille. Nixon, a conservative with a record in government to be proud of, had to resign. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat will not. He will wriggle out of it. That is the sad story of this country: a dearth of any political sobriety. Politically, we are still in kindergarten.
Last week in Palace Square, Valletta, we saw a sign of things to come. Instead of cowering away somewhere, Minister Manuel Mallia triumphantly and defiantly turned up for a gathering inside a tent titled a ‘Government that listens’. An event financed from our taxes was turned into a political meeting.
He received a rapturous welcome from an unimpressive crowd, a throwback to those terrible Golden Years of Labour when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici received similar welcomes wherever he went, as an oppressed country sank and sank.
Oblivious to the irony, Mallia told his cheering rent-a-crowd that he had battled abuse and public violence in the 1980s and as minister responsible for national security, he would not accept a return to those times.
But that is exactly what we got, abuse and public violence thanks to his trusted aides. Instead of shunning him, the Labour crowd cheered him on, turning a failure into a hero, abuse into victory. Labour is again the oppressor. That crowd wanted more, just like they did in the 1980s.
It is irrelevant whether Mallia goes or not. Yes, he blundered more than average, but the average performance of his colleagues in that oversized Cabinet is already very low. This is Labour for you; this is the only standard to expect. A replacement of Mallia will not be any better because he would come from Labour, a party that threw morality to the wind. It is all about power and cronyism and not about ethics and standards of public behaviour.
Nevertheless, Labour did not win last year’s election just on the votes of that Mallia crowd. It was an astounding victory, propelled by backroom deals, disenchanted liberals going through a divorce, a midlife crisis or both, people out to get what they do not deserve and yes, some plenty naïve ones too.
Labour knows it will only stay in power if it continues to pander to that varied crowd. That last budget full of handouts, which went up in flames that night the minister’s driver pulled out his gun, just went to show how low Labour will go to please that other potion of its electoral base, those who are in it for personal gain, and not socialism. It said: being on social benefits is not a profession. Only a party with no soul would say a thing like that.
Labour’s solution to its abysmal failure in government is to continue to pander to interest groups. It ignores the common good, and caters instead for people with very vested interests in keeping it in government. That is why this country is being raped and plundered.
That is why we have the Equalities Minister Helena Dalli, in between dodging the press, promoting a Gender Identity Bill that has been described by neurologist Patrick Pullicino as “superficial and seriously lacking” and by Life Network chairman Miriam Sciberras as one that would “alter the meaning of family life in Malta” and “poison our children’s minds in schools” through so-called anti-homophobia programmes.
A replacement of Mallia will not be any better because he would come from Labour, a party that threw morality to the wind
The Notarial Council too has serious reservations about the Bill, particularly with regard to the fact that the names of people, who change their name and gender to take on a new identity, will be kept secret. The council is concerned about ensuring third party rights. But this is the very crux of the problem. The Bill caters only for a minority, and not for the common good. That is how Labour works. It only has votes in mind, whatever price society will have to pay.
Thankfully we have so far been spared another assault on our society, this time by Justice Minister Owen Bonnici. He said that by Christmas he would gatecrash Parliament with a drugs reform Bill that effectively legalises marijuana for personal use. That didn’t happen.
Parents of youths crossing over to Gozo over this festive season can enjoy their last Christmas with their minds at rest that the risk of arrest may keep their children from meddling with drugs. By next year it will be a free for all.
And if that is not enough, our Justice Minister now says he wants to change the morality laws to stop the police from spoiling the fun of lap and pole dancing at gentleman’s clubs.
This minister really needs to get his priorities right – like by finally bringing forward the Bill to set up an office of the commissioner and a standing committee on standards in public life. That might just help contain the excesses of his colleagues.
As Labour tries to distract the country away from Malliagate with sex and dope, out comes the Education Minister accusing the Nationalist Party of trying to restore its virginity after the “orgy of the past”. He went into some surgical details on how to restore virginity that may have been a bit crass, but it certainly didn’t warrant the over-reaction of PN MP Claudette Buttigieg.
It would be better if Buttigieg concentrated a bit more on that Gender Identity Bill. What she said so far did not come across as cohesive, and just betrays a PN fear of upsetting the gay community one more time.
The funny thing is that Bartolo is right when he accuses the PN of trying to restore its virginity, because that is exactly what it should be doing. It is the only antidote available to the promiscuous government to which Bartolo belongs. Labour has long lost its virginity to votes.
An increasingly confident Simon Busuttil laid out some of the plans he has in mind when addressing his party’s general council. He put forward three proposals:
A reform of the public sector that would give people their rights quickly and efficiently without anyone having to “go begging” before a minister; a true meritocracy where major public appointments are scrutinised by Parliament for their suitability and capabilities; and the true independence of public institutions like the planning authority so they would finally begin to serve the people, who finance their salaries through taxes, and not act as a smokescreen for the government.
These are radical reforms and key to all of them is individual empowerment. It is a policy poles apart from Labour’s institutionalised clientele system that makes everyone dependent upon it in the true socialist spirit of Labour old.
The PN must restore its virginity through fresh policies and fresh faces. The Labour alternative is far too hard to bear. When Nixon went, the Republican Party went on to lose the next presidential election to Democratic Jimmy Carter, possibly the worst president in US history. It took a conservative, Ronald Reagan, to restore dignity back to the country.
It is here, where the parallelism between Malliagate and Watergate stops. There is a prime minister-in-waiting, growing stronger in credibility as Labour begins to buckle under as its promiscuous ways are exposed day after day.
Politics is dirty business, there is no denying that. Better a restored hymen, with political values in mind, than a degenerate government playing the virgin but is as promiscuous as they come.