It's nice to be able to start with a quote that very few people (Darrin Zammit Lupi, are you reading?) will reference easily, so here goes... "me, I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk..."

What has brought on this flight of late 70s whimsy, you may ask? Another hint, there, incidentally. Try to follow me, here, because it's a Sunday morning I'm writing this, and there might be a few gaps in the logic.

We've just had - are still having - a pretty awesome paroxysm of comments and dicta from on high about the pronouncements of one Salvu Mallia. He's even been afforded the inestimable honour of being discussed in an editorial of the Sunday (paper) edition of this very medium and on the same day by no less an erudite columnist as Mark Anthony Falzon, also of this parish.

According to some, Mallia should be banished to the Outer Darkness, never again to sully the fair name of the Nationalist Party with his heinous vulgarity and free thinking.  According to others, and I count myself firmly within this camp, the blinkered, hidebound, navel-contemplating fogies who take that point of view should wake up, smell the coffee and join the real world.

We're talking here about a single individual who, while he chooses to express himself in language that is less than diplomatic, is not in a position to influence the PN's position on matters of real importance

I mean, for the sake of all that's beautiful, we're talking here about a single individual who, while he chooses to express himself in language that is less than diplomatic, is not, at least last time I looked, in a position to influence the PN's position on matters of real importance.

It would have been a good idea, incidentally, for Mallia's thoughts on abortion to have been ignored by the PN and the point made that the real issue facing the country is rampant corruption. No-one in his right political mind was about to start a debate on abortion in Malta with the elections up-coming, so the single-issue campaigners (on both sides of the question) should have been told to go away, not been pandered to.

 

And another thing, he didn't say anything favourable about Hitler, only craven fools who don't speak English (are you listening, European Socialists?) or who have a hypocritical streak a mile wide down their spineless backs choose to think so.   This applies to much of what he says, people keep (choosing to) mis-interpret him or, sadly, just fail to understand what he's saying.

 

Basically (hate that word, but sometimes it's the only one available) Mallia is just a lawnmower, you can tell it by the way he talks, geddit now?   He mouths off, he attracts popular attention but he's not - or should not be - the subject of "stop the presses, Salvu's spoken" material.   

 

More importantly, he's not, he's already said, going to be a Franco Debono (did you hear him on Thake's show, by the way?) and blackmail the party, either.  He'll resign, which I take to mean that he will honourably resign his seat (if elected) if he can't live with party discipline, though after the travesties committed in the name of party discipline by people like Leo Brincat, I suggest humbly that it's about time and a bit for sensible parties to revise their positions on when to let people vote according to their conscience.

 

All the above said, Mallia's not-so-subtle reminder that we're being ruled over by what can fairly be described as a bunch of thugs and that the PN is really not doing its utmost to shove that message down the throats of people who matter was timely and necessary. 

 

So even more power to his elbow: I know what I like, as Genesis told us, and it's Salvu Mallia and his dose of reality.

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