A few weeks ago social media were awash with You Tube clips of Meryl Streep’s six-minute Golden Globe acceptance speech. The one where she criticises Donald Trump and talks about disrespect inviting disrespect and how acts of humiliation committed by a prominent public person are an endorsement for others to do the same.

Although the speech was essentially directed at the US, the Maltese were quick to make it about us. It was shared over and over, accompanied by the mandatory chorus of approval and gratuitous examples of local ‘political incorrectitude’.

I suppose that is because the world is full of Trumps. There’s a special word for this kind – a distinctly American word too. I don’t think The Sunday Times of Malta would approve. Think Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. I’ll make it easier. It begins with an ‘a’ and ends in ‘sshole’.

It’s not a word that shocks me remotely. On the contrary, it’s one I too am guilty of using from time to time. That said, there have been many more times when I chose not to use it. If I hadn’t, I’d be debarred by now.

I caught the tail-end of Xarabank a couple of weeks ago, still in time to have heard that word being bandied about by PN candidate Salvu Mallia, who hasn’t stopped using it since. If the rest of what he said was riveting or intelligent, I might temporarily have overlooked the juvenile behaviour. But after listening to a number of his interviews, I’ve come to the conclusion that Mallia is useless without the straitjacket of a script. He waffles, contradicts himself, runs down anyone who disagrees with him and is incapable of seeing an argument through. And like most who run out of ideas or repartee, he resorts to foul language and ends up sounding just like his favourite word.

That doesn’t make him a bad person. But it makes him bad for Maltese politics. The PN know this and know they’re up the creek without a paddle. On top of their already precarious position, this is the last thing they need.

The fact that they embraced him as a candidate at all is indicative of desperate times calling for desperate measures and an underlying unwillingness to turn people away. Then again, restaurants have been known to turn people away, even when they are not fully booked. It’s a trick that works. There’s usually more interest in a restaurant where it is hard to get a table.

The people who are trying to bury their head in the sand and convince the rest of us that Mallia is exactly what the (spin-)doctor ordered are being dishonest. Moreover, they are doing a disservice to the Nationalist Party and to Mallia himself.

We have before us now the prospect of long-standing MPs being written off and rubbished because they don’t quite compare to the latest pin-up who is being hailed a hero in some quarters

They know better. If you read between their lines, the people rooting for Mallia don’t see any long-term future for him within the party. They insist he’s not a threat because he’s not a current MP, and may never become one. His usefulness therefore is a short-term fix. He’s a publicity stunt: ‘any publicity is good publicity’. The Opposition leader has told us that Mallia has made politics “more interesting”. Agreed. But so did many others the PN now can’t abide.

Meanwhile, many other members of the party faithful are underwhelmed. Mallia is already causing a ruckus. We have before us now the prospect of long-standing MPs being written off and rubbished because they don’t quite compare to the latest pin-up who is being hailed a hero in some quarters. “Who dares stand and be counted?” is the new cry to arms.

It’s all very well to stand outside Castille with a placard and whinge about corruption. But I guess you’d be more convincing if you had done that prior to August 2016. If you ran a Google search on Salvu Mallia before that, you’d have encountered a conspicuous absence of information. You’d be wading through a sea of ‘Manuel Mallia’ or ‘Steve Mallia’ material before stumbling across anything. And when you did, it would probably turn out to be the August 2012 Heritage Malta initiative of Ovid’s Metamorphosis performed by the man himself.

Mallia’s own political metamorphosis coincided nicely with his television programme Madwarna being axed from PBS in August 2016. Prior to that, the first three-and-a-half years of Joseph Muscat’s government had not been on his radar. The first murmurings of political discontent came then. And there has been a steady build-up ever since, culminating with Mallia’s discovery that Muscat is the worst thing to happen to Malta since the plague.

I’ve never met Mallia, but I know his type: mercurial, impulsive, colourful, non-conformist, defiant, and as impossible to rely upon as to pin down. He’s someone you might have on your Christmas party list but not in your Party. Not unless you’re looking for trouble.

Ironically, Mallia is causing more trouble to his own party. The PL must surely see him as political manna from heaven.

Actors are naturally attention-seeking. The same is probably true of many politicians. But with actors it goes way beyond that. They’re addicted to drama, to self-aggrandizement and to the sound of their own dissenting voice. People like Mallia don’t follow rules, won’t compromise and won’t settle for supporting roles. He has already given us a very clear preview of the show that’s getting ready for the road.

The people who reckon he’s what the PN desperately needs today, or that he represents the punch-in-the-stomach populism of ‘Trumpism’, are the same people who thought Trump crass and vulgar and thought Streep’s speech brilliant.

Incidentally, I wasn’t that impressed. I found it a trifle wet. But I’m even less impressed by Trump.

As for Mallia...  a word of advice: lose the lying-bit**-locker-room-lexicon. It’s never cool or becoming. Not at 16, less so at 64.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com

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