Last week was the seven-month anniversary of Daphne’s murder. So, on cue, Labour rolled out another creature of its grotesque carnival of distractions. This time it was courtesy of the Forum Żgħażagħ Laburisti (FŻL) who launched a ‘Proud of My Politics’ campaign, ostensibly to celebrate the fulfilment of some piddling wegħda elettorali.
Of course, anyone who caught a fleeting glimpse at the ‘Proud’ banners strung along Malta’s main roads would not have had the faintest clue what they were about. The iconography of the banners clearly pointed to a pro-government sentiment. Many, as I did, must have asked themselves: proud of what, exactly?
Had the banners really been intended to launch an awareness campaign of government’s ability to fulfil its electoral programmes in the run-up of its first full year in office, it would be written off as a PR flop. But I am sure that this did not bother the creators of the slogan in the least. Their real intention was otherwise: to deploy any sort of countervailing cacophony as a distraction from the silence in front of the Great Siege monument in Valletta.
And yet such desperate measures often have multi-layered motivations. Why the need for FŻL to proclaim loudly it is ‘proud’ of its politics? Doth it protest too much? Is Labour trying to drown out the feelings, even within its ranks, of shame and anger, rather than justifiable pride, because its economic and social policy successes are indelibly stained by corruption, impunity, abuse of power, institutional neutering and the suspicion of collusion in foul crime?
With this reading, ‘Proud of My Politics’ is not a whoop of victory but a snarl of defiance. Almost a year ago the Labour Party scored a second successive historic electoral landslide that reshaped national politics and gave it the mandate to reshape Maltese society.
Yet today its every step is beset by suspicion, its every pronouncement scoffed with derision. And this from people of goodwill who are not on the Opposition’s bandwagon, who wish more than anything else for a government of political integrity within a functioning democracy, even if they disagree with its social agenda.
Down that dark alley, fear-fuelled defiance will breed despair, and it could explode into violence. This cannot go on
They – we – are outraged and disgusted. And government responds with more in-your-face defiance, and a ring-fencing of its loyalists and apologists into an impregnable mental and emotional fortress. We now have incontrovertible proof that Labour/government figures are orchestrating a massive social media campaign to foster unquestioning loyalty, destroy opposition and demonise the ‘other’. As I write, I have just read a meme going round seriously suggesting the setting up of a church just for Laburisti.
An indispensable part of this fortress mentality is the insistence by Labour that it is still the underdog. Of course, this is a political absurdity. But when you perceive of and portray yourself as the eternal social class underdog, it is that much easier to justify any means to reach your end, which is power over the hated ‘other’.
In this politics of defiance, no quarter can be asked or given, for at heart it is a politics of fear. The inner citadel of the government fortress is haunted by the fear of being brought to justice. The outer bastions of its supporters are bound together by the fear of losing face, of discovering a betrayal of their loyalty. No price is too high to stave off this double fear, even if that price is democratic sclerosis and the odd death.
The last time Malta faced a similar danger to its democracy was between 1982 and 1987. But this time round there does not seem to be anyone of Eddie Fenech Adami’s moral stature within the Opposition to present a viable alternative. And there does not seem to be anyone on the government side with Dom Mintoff’s influence and his qualms of conscience, to help turn the ship of state.
Are we really, truly, saying that the situation is so desperate that there is no discernible way out? Down that dark alley, fear-fuelled defiance will breed despair, and it could explode into violence.
This cannot go on.
Birdie in the hand
The other day I happened upon a group of Italian students who were sniggering and taking photos around one of the jablo sculptures in the Tritons Fountain square. It was the one depicting a giant hand holding a bird: ‘Aħjar għasfur f’idejk milli mija fl-ajru’, (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush). Apparently, ‘avere l’uccello in mano’ means something entirely different in Italian.
It got me wondering: could it be, could I dare imagine, that under Jason Micallef’s antediluvian cultural virginity there might well be hiding a naughty multilingual sophisticate yearning to come out? Or was it just karma?
Nah, definitely just karma.
sandrospiteri1965@gmail.com