Boxing but not too clever

I watched a recording of Xarabank last Sunday, because I’d been told that the Joseph Muscat/Lawrence Gonzi faux presidential-run-up debate was worth a look. For my sins, which really and truly must be many, I had to endure seemingly interminable advertising and generally mediocre television in order to get an idea of how the Leader of the Opposition measures up to the PM.

To be honest, whether or not the Lil’elves who will fill the comments section below believe it (like I care) I approached the show with something approximating an open mind. Various public utterances by Muscat had given me the idea that maybe – just maybe – here was a really new Labour leader, one who wouldn’t set my teeth on edge.

I’m going to do Muscat a real favour and give him a dose of the truth. I’m not at all sure whether the people with whom he has chosen to surround himself will do it (perhaps more precisely, I should be referring to the people with whom his party has chosen to surround him).

Since I’m supposed to be a died-in-the-wool Nationalist lackey, perhaps I shouldn’t be doing this, I should be letting him labour (hehe) under the impression that he was as good as all the breathless comments under the story about the debate would make it appear.

But no, let’s get this all out into the open, shall we? We need a decent Leader of the Opposition, to keep this lot honest, after all.

Proceedings started off pretty ok, which is not exactly high praise. Muscat made a grab for the middle ground, no doubt doing precisely what his handlers had advised.

He went for the chattering classes and for what passes for their philosophy – he went after, in other words, the people who say they are bored with politics and the way it is done here. You know the ones I mean, the ones who think that the fact that they say they don’t read the newspapers is evidence of their independence of thought, rather than being proof of their failure to understand that it is the dynamic of politics that shapes their lives.

After this unashamed lunge for the floating vote (is there really any such beast in Malta?) with Gonzi seeming on the defensive for the first couple of minutes, I thought we were in for a bit of fun at the expense of the PM.

If you’re a Muscat fan, however, this is where things took a turn for the worse and kept going that way all through the evening. I know the Lil’elves will bridle at this point and fire off a series of comments calling me all manner of names, but in their heart of hearts they know: from his insistence in calling the PM “Laawrence” (and that is not a misprint) through his failure to answer any of the questions put to him, onwards and downwards through his evident unpreparedness (and this when he was up against an acknowledged master of detail and presentation) all the way to ignoring a question put to him by Daphne’s favourite quasi-elf, Gerald Fenech, Muscat was the brash acolyte to Gonzi’s smooth master.

The first evasion – by using a tactic anyone who has done “Public Affairs 101” knows by heart – was when the programme’s presenter, Joe Azzopardi, asked him what Labour would do about the utility rates.

It was a fair question, in the context, and the response was something on the lines of “we have a strong banking system and we shouldn’t cause shocks to the system”, which is a pretty nice sound-bite but not exactly a concrete answer to a specific question.

Xarabank being what it is, that is a programme made up of sound-bites, Muscat got away with that one. In truth, I’m not surprised that the Lil’elves get themselves worked up into such a tizzy about his performance, because many of them are incapable of producing anything other than written sound-bites (yes, I know it sounds strange, but you know what I mean – slogans without substance, if you like) themselves. They see a tactic they recognise and get all warm and fuzzy, thinking it’s a brilliant move.

Sorry, chaps, it just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny now, does it? Come on, you know I’m right.

The price of utilities exercised the two leaders quite a bit, as can be imagined. Gonzi made the perfectly valid point that, basically, something has to give – we either pay for oil and other necessaries we don’t produce ourselves or we cut back on other areas.

Muscat’s response was that the government shouldn’t have spent seventy million on pre-election gimmickry. His source for this, of all things, was Illum, as if this is the Bible (he repeated his reference to this august newspaper, apparently believing that if you say it twice, it’s twice as credible) If that’s the best the MLP Research Department can come up with, they need to up their game PDQ.

This idea of repeating things seems to have captured Muscat’s imagination. When engaging Gonzi on the price of utilities, Muscat hit on the idea of chanting the mantra, for all the world as if he was in the playground, “trid tirtiraha, trid tirtiraha” (you’ll have to withdraw it, you’ll have to withdraw it) referring to the proposal the Government made to the social partners.

To this, Gonzi, by now flying pretty high, responded with a pretty tough, by Maltese standards, “we’re here to govern, not be popular” (which is all very well one year into a five-year stretch, I suppose)

From water and electricity rates, the game moved on to the rent laws, where Muscat was given a great chance to redeem Old Labour’s legacy.

Back in the day, a significant number of houses were “requisitioned” (in other words, stolen) by the then-Labour Government and handed over to the Labour Party as clubs. Asked whether these would be handed back, Muscat played the youth card and said that he had no idea what this was all about.

True enough, he was a mere lad when this bit of larceny was perpetrated but, here again, his “research department” let him down big time. Didn’t they see this one coming?

He didn’t help himself when Gonzi chucked him a lifeline, suggesting that he commits to giving the houses back to their rightful owners. Muscat just laughed at this, thus reminding us that he was too young to know what this means to the owners .

While on the subject of youth, if you watched the programme you will have noticed that the PM treated Muscat perfectly correctly, as befits the Leader of the Opposition.

This notwithstanding, and presumably because he had been given a check-list by his handlers before he went on, Muscat just had to make some sort of wise-crack about Gonzi being a teacher and he (Muscat) not being a school-boy.

Talk about a back-fire: up to then, it hadn’t really occurred to me that this was the case, but Muscat made me realise precisely what it was about his performance that was bugging me: he was acting like a smart-ass student making wise-ass remarks from the front row and then squirming around in his seat to beam at his giggling compatriots.

Space precludes more than a fleeting reference to the shallow use of slogans and sound-bites. On the subject of immigration, Muscat is starting to risk sounding like the other Muscat, because although the Labour leader is certainly no racist, the temptation to make a pitch for the xenophobe vote is proving to be unbeatable.

There was plenty more with which to rap Muscat sharply on the knuckles but I’ll close with one episode which illustrated the tenor of the man.

Appropriately since they’re politicians, the lads got into a debate about gas. Gonzi, responding to Muscat’s point about the possibility of a price-rise, pointed out that the price of oil and gas was hardly something within his gift to control. Muscat’s response, to grunts and similar emissions (and I choose my words with more care than usual) of approbation from the audience, was to extrapolate from this and start crowing about how the price of gas was going to go up.

Perhaps the terminally bewildered portion of the audience in the studio believed him, but the people on the other side of the screen didn’t seem to: he was voted as very, very second rate, and this by a viewing audience that can hardly be said to be a natural haven for PN sympathisers.

After all, as one such (according to the Lil’elves, anyway) I wasn’t watching, much less televoting – I had to suffer the inconvenience of watching on a netbook screen. The things I do for my art.