Ghosts from the past

I was intrigued this week by Lawrence Gonzi’s overreaction to a dig in a MaltaToday commentary on the former Prime Minister’s invective on social media about a report in British tabloid The Sun.

The Sun, once upon a time the only official source of topless nudes,  pictured Malta as the Mecca for sex and drugs and limitless fun.

All those who work in tourism welcome such free marketing for their product.

In the MaltaToday missive, Gonzi was reminded in a rather tongue and cheek manner that during his tenure as prime minister we were purposely promoting Malta as a haven for nightclubs, wild mega concerts and giving the impression that the island is a free for all.

Let us face, it is one of the only places where you can buy vodka off the streets if you are 14 with no ID check, cheat your way through a night club, drink and drive and buy coke from the street without any difficulty.

Gonzi may have been a bastion of conservatism but he presided over a nightlife culture which was hell bent in ignoring the norms and taking fun to the next level.

Yet what got to me, was not the fact that a former prime minister chose to share his thoughts over a tabloid article.  That is his right.  The worst part of all was his reaction to the reaction to his original opinion.

And he did this in his characteristic vintage method.  He avoided mentioning MaltaToday lest he give the newspaper too much importance and he went about justifying his original comments.

Yet, it revealed his mindset.  I guess it read like this: ‘Considering the abysmal track record of this Labour government on corruption and rule of law, anything I am going to say is going to be a breath of fresh air and has a moral standing.’

It may have been music  to his loyal sycophants but not to the vast majority of those who worked with him or close to him or orbited in his political world or experienced his brand of bad politics.

Gonzi has not changed.  He remains a self-righteous man and typically oblivious to the sins of his past.

I cannot see what has changed when it comes to attracting young people wanting to have fun in Malta.  From the students who come here with the excuse of improving and studying English but leave the island educated in long sleepless nights of endless drink and fun, to the young men and women from Italy, France, Scandinavia and Germany who journey through the night and early morning with all its glamour and depravity.

Gonzi did not promote some austere and puritan form of tourism based on the Bhutan model when he was prime minister.  He went for the big thing, with the emphasis on numbers; quantity not quality.

No different to today’s model.

He never learnt his lesson that politicians are not expected to be the moral compass of society but managers and drivers of change.

We all have our legacy to deal with.

All of us must be aware of our mistakes.

I for one, promoted John Dalli against Lawrence Gonzi in 2004.  If I had the chance to rewind the clock back, I would have opted to do nothing of the sort.

In 2004, Gonzi turned against all those who had preferred another candidacy to his.  His attitude was typically counter productive.  It was political apartheid at its best and it pushed many people out of the Nationalist party.  To make matters worse Gonzi fomented the hate blogs against all those who opposed him. They were ostracised, ridiculed, labelled, tagged and made to feel outcasts.

And then there were his political decisions.  His social conservative charter against divorce, gay rights, IVF and all the rights that today are taken for granted was his legacy.  Not to mention the widespread decision to castigate and isolate all those individuals and companies that did not fall in line with the party leadership.

I could go on, citing every little decision taken from planning laws to financial services and privatisation.

None of these mistakes justify the excesses and grave errors of the Muscat and Abela administrations.

But two wrongs have never made a right.  And it cannot be that everytime one takes someone to task, we need to balance the argument by mentioning the other side.

Typically for some, the Gonzi outburst served to rekindle their ill feelings towards MaltaToday.  Predictably they are the same people who cannot accept that their patron saint is being taken to the cleaners.

It was of course history repeating itself.