‘We’re only in it for the money…’

Must be the influence of Brian May. What else can explain the sudden phenomenon whereby we all seem to have gone slightly mad?

OK, before proceeding allow me a small disclaimer. I do not mean ‘slightly mad’ in any medical sense of the word. I am fully aware that there are media conventions regarding infirmities of the mind… and that using words such as ‘potty’, ‘dotty’, ‘deranged’, ‘demented’, ‘wacko’, ‘cracked’, ‘mental’, ‘cuckoo’, ‘loony’, ‘loopy’ and ‘gaga’ is a big no-no in these politically correct times.

But that only applies to genuine mental illness. This means that it is impolite to describe people as ‘potty’, ‘cracked’ or ‘one screw short of a porno’… but only if they really are potty, cracked or one screw short of a porno. People who suffer from no such mental impairment fall into a different category. And besides: the sort of madness I refer to is of the much more mundane and less colourful variety you encounter every single day. For instance, the ability to hold two (sometimes three or four) entirely contradictory positions at the same time; or the propensity to perform remarkably daft actions which do not seem to make sense from any perspective… while at the same time complaining of the daftness of identical actions when performed by other people.

In other words, exactly the sort of behaviour exemplified by Joseph Cuschieri this week. That’s right, the Labour MEP who suddenly announced that he would not contest the next European election in protest against discriminatory tactics by the PL electoral machine… only to submit his nomination at the Electoral Commission just two days later.

From an outsider’s perspective, this U-turn – quite possibly the most abrupt volte-face ever performed in public by any politician, anywhere in the world – certainly does look slightly mad. Under normal circumstances, sane and level-headed people do not make defiant public statements about their intentions one day… and then go on to completely contradict those statements the next, without providing any form of explanation to account for the change of heart.

Under normal circumstances, sane and level-headed people do not make defiant public statements about their intentions one day… and then go on to completely contradict those statements the next

The only logical explanation for such behaviour is that the object of the person’s complaint – in this case, the tendency of the Labour Party machinery to favour some candidates over others before an election – will have been addressed in the meantime. But as it is clearly impossible for the Labour Party to have revised its electoral media strategy in the space of literally a few hours – that’s how long Cuschieri’s determination seems to have lasted – we can safely assume that there was no change to the state of play Cuschieri had actually complained about. Nor is it realistic to expect any such change. Political parties the world over push some candidates more than others. It is an inevitable consequence of the democratic electoral system in all its guises… and Cuschieri himself should know this better than most.

But what makes his actions decidedly odd is not so much the validity of his complaint itself. Cuschieri is after all perfectly correct in pointing out that the Labour Party’s electoral machinery gets used to favour certain candidates at the expense of others. Whether he is right to complain about it is another matter, but let’s take this one step at a time. Nor is it just the Labour Party to indulge in a little pushing and shoving when it comes to getting the right people into the right positions (or, more cogently, the wrong people out of them). One recent example we all saw was the curious case of Kevin Plumpton, the Nationalist candidate who was ‘punished’ by the party for apparently contradicting his party leader on the issue of the IIP citizenship bill.

Plumpton was precluded from PN media activities and prevented from speaking to the press. Coming a few months before the MEP election, that is the equivalent of branding the mark of Cain on poor Plumpton’s forehead: “This is our candidate, in whom we are mightily displeased.” And if the PN sticks to the usual pre-electoral pantomime script, it will also issue a last-minute reprieve: possibly even giving Plumpton a nominal push in the weeks ahead of election day… you know, just to dispel any perception of having copiously defecated upon the hapless candidate’s actual chances of ever getting elected.

About the only thing that makes Plumpton’s case in any way unusual is that the decision – and justification – was taken in full public view. Normally, this sort of thing happens behind closed doors. But this doesn’t mean it won’t be visible to anyone who cares to look.

This brings me to the doubtful wisdom of Cuschieri’s outburst this week. After all, few people are better positioned than he to comment on the delights of party preferences as a means of ensuring electoral success. Let’s face it: what chance would Joseph Cuschieri have had of being elected to the European Parliament at all, had he not vacated his local parliamentary seat to accommodate the seat-less Joseph Muscat in 2008… thus indebting the entire party to himself through a perceived act of self-sacrifice?

Unlike Plumpton-gate, those negotiations were not public. So we’ll never know exactly what was promised or how it was achieved in practice. But it was pretty obviously a case of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’. Give up your parliamentary seat for the leader, and we’ll see to it that you get elected to another (better paid) parliament to compensate you for your pains.

Cuschieri therefore benefitted from precisely the same machinations that he now complains are being used against him. He got elected to the European parliament on the strength of a whispering campaign whereby the Labour Party ‘informed’ its voters that it expected young Joseph to be rewarded for his gesture. So how dare the Labour Party suddenly start whispering a different tune? How dare they promote other candidates in his place, after all he did for them six years ago?

Well, herein lies the nuttiness. Apart from spectacularly contradicting himself in less than 48 hours, he has also publicly declared that the same PL feels its debt towards him has now been paid in full. By his own admission, the Labour Party no longer considers him worth expending any further energy or resources on, and would much prefer investing in other – presumably better – candidates.

Hm. Yes, that’s a fantastic plug to give yourself just a few weeks before an election, isn’t it?  “Vote for me, even my own party thinks I’m useless”. Almost as bad as a naked selfie… and arguably even more revealing. For thanks to Cuschieri’s little pirouette this week, we not only know that the party is now using its machinery and influence for benefit of other candidates to take his place... but we also know that yet another backroom agreement must have been reached in the meantime. How else to explain the suddenness of the volte-face? What – other than the 70,000 p.a. salary – might have induced Cuschieri to change his mind about contesting the election in little more than a heartbeat?

As some bright spark already observed in some online comment somewhere, we’ll get to know these details soon enough anyway. Just wait and see what position comes Cuschieri’s way if – some would say when, given his declaration this week – he fails to get elected to the European Parliament next June.

But I shall have to admit… from this new perspective, Cuschieri’s behaviour no longer looks quite so cracked or potty. There is clearly a method to his madness… and on closer scrutiny it turns out to be the same method we always see in connection with the mad scramble for well-paid public posts. Far from being deluded or demented, Cuschieri evidently made his own calculations and sniffed out the possibility that his own chances of re-election stood at close to nil. He may genuinely have felt that this was due to a shift in the Labour Party’s electoral priorities… or, who knows? He might have used that as a pretext. Either way, he very clearly (and very publicly) sent out a message to his party… a message that, for the sake of brevity, can roughly be translated as: “Hey! You still owe me one, and don’t ever forget that. So you’d better come up with an offer to compensate for my soon-to-be-lost EP seat… or I’ll huff and I’ll puff, etc.” 

Judging by the speed at which Cuschieri re-evaluated his own opinion on party preferences this week, I’d say it was a pretty successful strategy. The Labour Party must have fallen over itself in its frantic haste to prevent yet another public display of disunity, so soon after the Farrugia couple’s open revolt. “OK, OK, just contest the election for now, and we’ll think of something to reward you with if it all goes pear-shaped. Meanwhile for heaven’s sake keep your voice down… people are listening, you know...”

Quite ingenious, really. Whatever happens now, Cuschieri stands to benefit in one way or another. So does Labour, at least in the sense that it has contained another public embarrassment. The only real losers – not just in this, but in all such pre-electoral melodramas – are the people who will be called upon to vote for all this nonsense in a couple of months’ time. And this, perhaps, is the only remaining area where a certain delusion can still be discerned.

Through these and other little machinations – all aimed, please note, at maximising the benefit for the individual candidate concern, with scant regard for any issue of relevance to the voter – we also get a glimpse of how candidates and political parties actually view the electorate.

Judging by Cuschieri’s behaviour this week, anyone would think he genuinely believes that voters are interested in his own personal welfare… as though they’d vote for him for no other reason than to ensure he continues receiving a nice little salary package, with all the attached perks. Even more bizarrely, he seems to think that we would all be reassured to know that, even if unelected, he will still land himself something else to compensate. Otherwise, why would he have gone to such pains to make his lamentations heard in public?

At no stage does it seem to have crossed his mind that voters – even those who give him their number one – will have expectations of their own from their elected candidates… and these expectations will certainly have nothing to do with how well those candidates get to do for themselves in the end.

So no offence to Brian May, but – like Joseph Cuschieri – I think I’ll do a little U-turn of my own. The soundtrack to all this pottiness can no longer be ‘I’m going slightly mad’ by Queen. It will have to be Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s third studio album (hint: there is a cunningly concealed clue somewhere on this page)…