The 2017 electoral campaign, one of the most polarised in Malta’s history, is over. We are likely to know the outcome today. In the meantime, here are some odds and ends that I picked up during these last six weeks, in the hope that they will divert you from biting your nails even further before the results are out.
Gozo, pick me!
I think we can safely say that the frenetic bidding for Gozo’s votes verged on the ridiculous. Both parties were offering goodies like there was no tomorrow – which, of course, was exactly what they were afraid of, in very different ways. Gozitans must have been snickering behind their political scarves. Wait until the tunnel is in place and Gozo is just another extremity of Malta…
We love to loath foreign women
Nothing like a bit of electoral heat to bring our innate prejudices to boil. During this legislature we saw the dangerous concoction of Malta’s latent misogyny and xenophobia mixed in with the thrill that certain Maltese men feel for the ‘exotic’ foreign woman. Aside from the shameless nepotism, don’t tell me that the degree of vituperation visited upon Konrad Mizzi’s wife was not partly because she was dik iċ-Ċiniża.
And what about the story of Chris Cardona’s fatal attraction to voluptuous women in clothes-optional establishments? Young foreign beauties, we would be delicately informed, as we tsk’ed our way through the Sunday papers.
Not to be outdone, Labourites finally found their own version of the foreign temptress: ir-Russa, who, of course, had to be a sultry spy in league with the KGB, or the Nationalists, or Daphne, or the whole infernal lot.
Joseph the demi-god
Some inspired T-shirt maker came up with the PL slogan: ‘Ħadd m’hu perfett daqs Alla, imma Joseph Muscat viċin ħafna’ (No one is perfect like God, but Joseph Muscat is as close as you could get). Mintoff was is-Salvatur, and now Joseph Muscat has been raised to the Labour pantheon. One day he might get his very own eternal flame.
Children in campaign ads
When I read that the Commissioner for Children was on the look-out to ensure that children in electoral campaign ads could not be identified, I laughed till I cried. Or the other way round. It is true that children’s images have not been used on billboards. But one shameless PL ad finished with a close-up of a twee little girl in a wheelchair who was clearly getting instructions from behind the camera to tilt her head and look ‘sweet’.
Madame AB, in fact, worked for an underground group led by that shadowy master of disguise Lawrence Cutajar, whose day job is polishing the Police Commissioner’s desk
Not to mention the clearly identifiable children in sundry other electoral material on both sides of the aisle (although mostly on the PL side). So dear Commissioner, I salute your solitary trudge through the desert of Maltese electoral ethics.
‘They get low, we get high’
This message was posted on Felix Busuttil’s Facebook page after his speech at the Naxxar PL mass meeting. Of course, he meant to write: “When they go low, we go high”. But wasn’t it a delicious Freudian slip from the party who is pledging to liberalise the use of marijuana?
The passing of the dutiful consort
This legislature has seen many firsts. One of them was the changing role of the Prime Minister’s or President’s consort. Up to Lawrence Gonzi and including President Coleiro Preca, the wife’s (or husband’s) public role was essentially that of silent and dutiful support, patronising some good cause or other that would throw positive light on the leader.
Michelle Muscat and Kristina Chetcuti have broken this mould. They have done so in very different ways which do not need to be repeated here, but the point is that from now on we should start expecting a less retiring, more engaged presence at the Prime Minister’s side. That can be a good thing for gender equality, as long as it is handled with humility, taste and discretion.
Cross-fertilised slogans
Labour borrowed Eddie Fenech Adami’s dictum: “Those who do not fight corruption are themselves corrupt.” In turn the Nationalists lifted Mintoff’s mantra: “Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox” (Malta first and foremost). Political plagiarism is in. Now we are all Aħwa Maltin.
The STUFFAT conspiracy
I can now reveal that the Russian spy was not a tool of the KGB, or the CIA, or the Stamperija, or Daphne. Madame AB, in fact, worked for an underground group led by that shadowy master of disguise Lawrence Cutajar, whose day job is polishing the Police Commissioner’s desk. This group is called STop Unity and Foment Frothing Anarchy Today (STUFFAT for short), Malta’s version of SPECTRE, James Bond’s nemesis.
STUFFAT is dedicated to the collapse of Maltese society by undermining its institutions. The gathering in April at Mġarr was no innocent bromantic fenkata. I can reveal that it was, in fact, a secret meeting of the STUFFAT high command. In between the rabbit stew and the karawett they laid out their dastardly plan to destabilise the elections and the nation. We await with baited breath: did they succeed?