The economy stupid

This is not the first time that I used the words of Bill Clinton’s media guru James Carville in this column. It reveals my age, considering it is a phrase from the early 1990s.

And somehow all successful politicians know that whenever the economy is great the people just love their government and excuse it for almost everything else. That has been the case with the Labour government. With all its faults and mortal sins, it has hobbled on and found the electorate on its side.

It has also been able to do this because the Opposition is too weak and lacks the vision to excite the electorate, most especially on the economy. Bernard Grech knows this and the longer he takes to realise it, the longer his party is going to remain in opposition.

Yet, no matter how good the economy fares, we cannot, as the media, look the other way when the actions of government are conditioned by a thinking that is retrograde and undemocratic.

I have no special admiration for Jason Azzopardi or Arnold Cassola; the former I have consistently described for what he is, a hypocrite and a self-conceited narcissist, and Cassola, I do not dislike but find him at times petty and rather self-centred. I campaigned with him in Alternattiva and can never forget the frivolous and petty arguments he had with other Alternattiva activists. He too can be very superficial and trivial. And his decision to part with Alternattiva because of his personal stand on abortion may well be the undoing of Momentum sooner rather than later.

But, and a big but, no matter how much I dislike or disagree with them, I will defend Azzopardi’s and Cassola’s right to raise the red flag. In one case it is multiple requests for magisterial inquiries, and in the other case it is requests for some form of action from the Standards Commissioner.

They have not been all vexatious requests. Some have concerned issues journalists normally look into.

Within this context, the Prime Minister’s decision to narrow access to magisterial inquiries by Joe Citizen was wrong. It reveals the mindset of the Prime Minister.

That Azzopardi fires off Napalm hoping to get lucky is irresponsible, but the rules should not be changed to erase the fundamental principle that Joe Citizen can call for a magisterial inquiry.

The legislative steps to reform magisterial inquiries have now been taken and only time will tell if someone revisits this legislation in the years to come and revert it to what it was. My hunch is that no one will change anything. If the Opposition gets into government, it will find measures that diminish the heat on government a good thing not a bad thing.

The other faux pax is the comment by the Prime Minister when responding to the Standards Commissioner, a former chief justice. In his answer to a complaint filed by Cassola, the Prime Minister hinted at changing the law regulating complaints addressed to the commissioner. This was of course in response to the fact that Arnold Cassola was churning out complaints like ‘pastizzi.’

That Cassola was considered a nuisance by both the commissioner and the politicians was clear, but surely the solution is not a change in the law that governs complaints.

I believe that in all this, the people who are running the institutions should have more discretion or clarity when actions are vexatious.

I am no stranger to defamation cases, and it is not the first time that a magistrate with character has shot down a defamation case before the first hearing because of its vexatious nature. The same approach can be had with the Standards Commissioner. A legal action or a complaint must follow certain protocols and criteria, if they are not met in the first instance, then they should be discarded.

What I do not understand or find hard to understand is why Robert Abela is acting in this way when he does not need to.

He has a majority and is governing a small Island State where people are well off, relatively happy, not complaining and where the Opposition is like an ageing, parked Ferrari with no driver and no fuel. It is a country where the last protest by civil society group Repubblika was such a poor show of force that government ministers could hardly hide the smirk on their face. It is a country where Labour’s only real threat is Roberta Metsola, who is clearly not moving from Brussels to Malta. And more importantly where the economy is still booming.

Robert Abela needs to be surrounded by advisers who urge him to calm down, to take things in his stride, to play the game of the cool guy and not to say things that will bring the wrong publicity and attention.

Sure, the media will continue pointing out to him the sins of his government because that is what the media does. But the advice he should be given is not to hit out at the media but to reach out and engage.

Abela should dish out fewer categoric statements, more positive statements and be more sensitive to what he says and how he says it.

Whether we like it or not, as long as the economy moves, grows and jumps, the government is not in grave danger. It is the economy, stupid!