The Party of Stupid

Nationalist Party (PN). Remember? The one that keeps banging on about how it 'saved democracy' in 1987... and therefore deserves to remain in power forever (and ever and ever, Amen), without any opposition?

It's also the party that claims to have 'always been on the right side of history'... even at times when history very clearly went one way, and the Nationalist Party very clearly went the other (look under 'divorce' for further details).

And now? It's become the party that organizes mock-trials of its own members by a kangaroo court that might have fallen right out of a Dan Brown novel... while declaring open war on the only people in the world whose co-operation and support it actually needs to remain in power.

I don't know. Maybe there is some kind of subliminal genius at work in there somewhere, and it's so darn clever that I just can't see it. Or maybe they really have degenerated into the Party of Stupid, as all of the above implies.

But let's take a closer look, shall we? In all fairness, I am the first to admit that - faced with the so-called 'rebellion' of three Nationalist MPs - the PN did need to come back with some form of reaction... if nothing else, to save face with the electorate (a rather important consideration in politics, I'm sure you'll agree).

So what did they do? Simple: they gathered the party's anonymous 'head honchos' (who go by the tenebrous name of 'Kunsilliera', by the way... you know, just to maximize the basis for comparison with the Grand Chamber of a Masonic Lodge), locked them in a room and left them to pass judgment on the three rebels, for all the world like the Conclave of Cardinals they have come to so thoroughly resemble.

Not only were these 'defendants' denied any opportunity to actually put up any defence; but they were not even informed that they were on trial in the first place.

Seriously, folks: if Vladimir Putin did something similar, the whole world would howl in protest at the shocking disregard for the most elementary principles of justice and democracy. Yet here we have a party that talks about 'democracy' and 'justice' as though it invented both concepts itself... treating its own members exactly like the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti might have treated dissidents at the height of the Soviet Union.

And that's just the beginning. Matters got considerably worse when the PN's 'kunsilliera' trumpeted their 'verdict' from the rooftop of the Stamperija: a verdict which banned the three rebels from contesting the next election with the PN, while stopping conspicuously short of expelling them from the party.

Right, folks: now for the billion-dollar question. How, exactly, were the three MPs supposed to react? Let's ignore Pullicino Orlando, who is probably on his honeymoon right now (which reminds me: congratulations, Jeffrey)... and in any case had long declared he had no intention of contesting the next election anyway.

For much the same reason (minus the honeymoon) let us also overlook Jesmond Mugliett. This leaves us with the man making all the noise at the moment: Franco Debono, who is once again threatening to bring his own government down if this decision is not rescinded... and unless my ears deceived me last week, he has now even threatened to take his own party to court.

Can you imagine? A party in government, sued by one of its own MPs? I don't think even Jacques Tati could compete with that for sheer surrealism. But at the same time... well, what else was Debono supposed to do, anyway? It's not as though the 'verdict' left him with very much choice, you know.

In fact the PN left him with no option at all, but to pull the plug on Gonzi's government. For in case the PN has forgotten... Franco Debono still has a seat in parliament, you know.

And this brings me to the most worrying aspect of the truly sorry state that the Nationalist Party (a party some of us once looked up to, though it seems a long time ago now) has managed to reduce itself. It's not so much that they somehow managed to manoeuvre Franco Debono into a corner from which he has no way of escaping without destroying his government in the process. That would be bad enough, but it's actually much worse: it's that they put Debono in that corner, without even stopping to consider how he would react, or how they would react to his reaction.

And now look at them. They have suddenly, belatedly understood that their own actions will inexorably lead to their own loss of power. So what do they intend to do about it? Will they rescind the 'condemnation', as Debono insists they should? I fail to see why not: after all, they already performed a much more humiliating political U-turn last year... when they sheepishly withdrew a 'statement of principles' against divorce, only eight months (and one lost referendum) after it was published.

Alternatively, the PN always can stick to its guns and lose power as a result - for which, of course, they will afterwards try to blame on Franco Debono... even though we can all see perfectly clearly that it was their own stupidity, and not Debono at all, that engineered this astonishing mess to begin with.

Either way, the Nationalist Party has created for itself yet another lose-lose situation (their second in just two years, after the great divorce cock-up of 2011). They must now either swallow their tough words and be publicly defeated and humiliated by Franco Debono; or else, they must stand their ground and watch, helplessly, while Franco Debono takes recourse to the only line of action he still has available to him, and scuttles their government once and for all.

Honestly, folks. Do you see any intelligence at work in all this? I certainly don't.