Blame it on (the) Trio…

One of the fun things about the first Sunday after an election is that - having already pissed off around half the country by consistently failing to share its political views (which, just like everybody's else political views, are of course always 100% correct) - you also get to rub their collective noses into exactly where and how they got it all wrong, too.

That, of course, was NOT my intention when I sat down to write this article. No, indeed. Maybe it was the election of a new Pope (yippie yay!), maybe it was the fleeting (and sadly ephemeral) hint of an early spring this week... heck, it could even be a repeat of the midlife crisis I experienced at age 13 or thereabouts. But my thoughts this week were actually all about cute fluffy little bunny rabbits, doing what cute fluffy little bunny rabbits are famous for doing at this time of year... all to the tune of: "The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Rogering Rabbits!" (or some equally catchy pop tune).

Only it wasn't just rabbits. There were hamsters at it, too. And rainbows. And mermaids. And dancing little pixies. And what else? Let's see now: sugar (check); spice (check); all things nice (check)... oh yeah, and the inevitable angry drunken leprechaun who keeps stealing my goddamn car keys (check, you nasty little bugger, you).

Hang on, maybe this is all just a flashback from my little known glam rock phase. Whatever the case, I was actually looking forward to writing an article that - for a change - wouldn't even have pissed off that grumpy cat they keep posting pictures of on Facebook (you know, the one that vaguely resembles Toni Abela, after hearing the words 'blokka bajda' on tape).

And I had it almost entirely mapped out in my head, too. I was going to start with: "Look! Bunnies!" and end with: "...and they all rogered each other senseless to the end of their days. THE END."

Damn, what fun I was about to have. But then, the inevitable occurred. I made the tragic mistake of reading a couple of newspapers... dipping into a couple of blogs here and there... trolling through the online comments below... and what can I say? If THAT is how some of you are going to play the game, then I am afraid I shall have to leave all those cute little super furry animals for some other time, and instead get down to the dark and dirty business of setting things straight.

So the rest of this article will be a compendium of who (in my increasingly non-humble opinion) should really take the blame for the rout of the PN last Saturday. [Note: the original idea was to give a full breakdown of the many reasons for the defeat... but as that would require around 700 billion gigabytes of free memory on my hard-drive, I will limit today's analysis to only one factor).

That is to say...

The Troika

Yes, yes, I know many of you will assume there's an extra consonant in there somewhere. But for a change, cheap prostitution is not what I actually had in mind.

Equally far from my thoughts were those international financial institutions that have wrecked so many economies around the world... though I don't exclude returning to those in a future article about 'rogering' of an altogether less enjoyable kind.

Not today, however. Today's use of the word 'troika' refers to that trio of sensationally self-absorbed media pundits who have cocooned themselves away from the real world for so very long now, that they still fail utterly to appreciate how... it was they themselves wot dunnit! That's right: it was they, the Three Amigos (and one Amiga) whose only contribution to the Nationalist Party over the last decade has been to render it practically UNELECTABLE last Saturday... sickening us week after week (sometimes day after day) with their constant snide little references to 'Li'l Elves' and 'Peculiar Pundits'... if not to 'hamallagni' and the 'marmalja'... all of which was (and still is - for yes, believe it or not they're still at it: banging away about their own 'social superiority' for all the world as if anyone in his right mind would give a microscopic toss about what imaginary planet these people think they live on) nothing but a blatant attempt to keep alive the culture of political terrorism of the 1980s; and only for their own direct gain.

So to hear people like Andrew Borg Cardona so cavalierly shrug off all criticism that he - along with the other two members of the troika, Daphne and Lou - has for years been directly responsible for at least part of the massive voter haemorrhage that left the PN aenemic and in such desperate need of a blood transfusion that never came... I don't know, I honestly think perhaps the time has come to burst their ridiculous little bubble once and for all.

I for one can think of a good number of reasons - exactly 40,000 a year, to be precise - why an otherwise intelligent man like Borg Cardona would so totally blind himself to the many, may, many, MANY reasons why around 37,000 former PN voters simply couldn't bring themselves vote PN this time round.

But tell you what: I'll cut him some slack this time, because unlike the other two, he actually moderated his tone as the extent of the PN's humiliation (and his own contribution thereto) finally swam into his line of vision.

Not so the other two, who still don't get it at all. Daphne of course never will. She is physically incapable of ever seeing things from any other perspective than her own; and seeing as her own perspective is now skewed to the point of total psychotic delusion - she is even on record claiming that the election result was the 'triumph of evil', and that 37,000 people voted Labour specifically to piss her off - I am afraid we shall have to rule out any possible future return to the Daphne of old.

By 'Daphne of old' I refer to that other Daphne whom some of us - in another galaxy, long long ago - once looked up to. Those were the days when she still wrote articles like the brilliantly perceptive (and Oh, so prophetic!) one that was circulated online in recent weeks: the one that ended with the spectacularly accurate prediction: "What if we find ourselves, in 20 years' time with the choice of two absolutely disreputable political parties? What if the Nationalist Party disintegrates into the kind of sagging, soggy, useless mess of the Sixties... a heap that gave rise to the joke "Tgħajjatx għax tqajjem il-gvern!"? What is a traditionally Nationalist supporter supposed to do... vote for the Labour Party, vote for a mess, or not vote at all?"

Besides: neither Daphne nor her "Bondiguard" - as Lou was described in a genius Facebook 'meme' this week - can ever be expected to understand or even discern the truly monumental irony that lies behind the PN's downward spiral into precisely the soggy, shapeless mess predicted by Daphne in 1992.

It was, in part, the direct result of all the incitement and lies (and such lies! Wouldn't know where to even begin listing them all out...) - not to mention the unsightly elitism and class hatred of the kind that would have been embarrassing even halfway through a performance of Les Miserables - they themselves have taken visible pleasure in inflicting upon the country for years.

Now: if we were dealing with non-pathological cases here - as we are, at least in ABC's case - I would expect the election result alone to finally open their eyes to how deeply culpable all three really have been in achieving it.

But Daphne, I fear, is beyond ever seeing this reality with her own eyes; and in any case has now waded way, way too far into the river of human excrement to ever manage to one day wade back.

As for Lou Bondi, I for one will close an eye at the total, preposterous jackass he made of himself just hours before polling booths opened (If nothing else he gave us something to laugh about at an otherwise tense moment... and laugh at Lou we did, loud and long.)

But I cannot so lightly forget the bald attempt to precipitate a nationwide panic, by stoking entirely unsubstantiated fears that he himself might conceivably be targeted by Labour thugs.

Leaving aside the absurdity of filing a police report about a crime that has yet to take place... there was so much wrong with his behaviour from a media ethics point of view, that quite frankly he has forfeited his right to ever be taken seriously as a journalist again.

It was, in a word, unforgivable, and the BA was entirely correct to ban any announcement of Bondi's letter to the Police Commissioner from being aired on TV or radio. Indeed it may even be a crime (though I can't be arsed to check the Criminal Code).

But criminal or otherwise, what tried to do was deliberately instil fears of a return to an age of political hatred and violence that is already alien to ALL the younger voters in this election (and should be even to the older ones). To do this out of genuine fear would of course be understandable... even if remains the height of journalistic irresponsibility. But no such genuine fear existed at all; and there was nothing at all since distant 1987 to suggest that the possibility was even remotely real.

Naturally we all know why Lou Bondi did it. It was nothing but a last-ditch attempt to influence the outcome of an election - not with a view to winning, mind you. It was already way too late in the day for that.

No, the most he could have hoped for was to change a few minds before voting began; and even then merely to cut the PN's losses ahead of an already guaranteed defeat.

I can't understand how a man who resorted to such a ghastly electoral ploy should still be allowed anywhere near State broadcasting. But then again there are a lot of things I have never understood about this country, like...

... why we never write about cute fluffy bunny rabbits. Now THAT is something that one day has to change...