Such Christmas spirit. So jolly...

There’s one thing I’ve never fully understood about Christmas. It’s called ‘the ‘season to be jolly...’ but nobody ever specified ‘jolly what’, exactly.

By the looks of things, I’d say ‘jolly miserable’... or ‘jolly miffed’... or ‘jolly well pissed off’, if it comes to it. I mean honestly: even British and German soldiers took a break from exterminating each other in the trenches, to play a friendly football match on Christmas Day, 1914. And even a tight-fisted old miser like Ebenezer Scrooge would allow the season of good cheer to penetrate his crusty exterior at least once in his lifetime (though admittedly he needed a little supernatural prodding, and a timely reminder that the alternative to merriment was an eternity of torment in the fires of Hell).

In Malta? No such luck. Christmas can come and go as often as it likes: if our Parliament is an accurate representation of the nation’s zeitgeist – as well it should be: there are, after all, more MPs than electoral quotas to actually represent – then a nation of grumpy sods we always were, and a nation of grumpy sods we will always remain... Christmas or no blooming Christmas. 

So perhaps it’s a good thing that Walt Disney didn’t choose Malta’s parliament as a setting for its timeless classic, ‘Snow White Does the Lonely Mountain’. Otherwise there would be 71 dwarfs  instead of only seven, all with names like: ‘Grumpy’, ‘Angry’, ‘Furious’, ‘Belligerent’, ‘Aggressive’; ‘Bad Tempered’, ‘Foul-mouthed’, ‘Bitter’, ‘Resentful’, ‘Spiteful’, ‘Malignant’, and so on. 

But let’s look on the bright side (it is Christmas, after all). At least they’re consistent. They might flip-flop or lie through their teeth about every other issue under the Star of Bethlehem... but about their true feelings for one another, our political parties are nothing if not entirely honest and forthcoming. They hate each other’s guts... and will continue to hate each other’s guts, even while enjoying a holiday commemorating ‘peace and goodwill to all humankind’.  

That way, at least you always know precisely where you stand with a Maltese politician. You stand with hate and anger. With insults and tirades. With embarrassing, unsightly kindergarten scenes such as the last parliamentary session before the Christmas recess, which had to be suspended for unruly behaviour no fewer than four times. 

You’ve got to admire that sort of chutzpah, you know. It’s becoming rare in this great age of artificial sentiment and political correctness. For let’s face it, people: none of us are really in the mood for Christmas anyway. There’s murder, violence and mayhem almost everywhere you cast your gaze. The Cold War looks as though it’s been taken out of the freezer and left too close to the oven.  It’s kind of hard to keep up the appearance of a jovial, festive atmosphere, when armed soldiers have to patrol Christmas markets in case of terrorist attacks, and intolerance and xenophobia reign supreme in all five continents.

But you know how it is: we all do our best to make an effort regardless. Grim and foreboding though 2017 looks set to be, we still at least try to celebrate its onset with as much merriment and good will as we can muster. Heck, we’ll even give each other presents, to have something to be joyful about when the world offers nothing at all.

It’s only our 71 representatives in Parliament who seem incapable of doing the same. In fact, come to think of it... they’re the only ones who are perpetually angry, hostile and ill-tempered in this country, anyway. Kind of strange, when you think about it. If these are the chosen representatives of a nation of 420,000... why isn’t everyone else screaming, shouting and calling each other names? Why is it only Nationalist and Labour MPs... and yes, their press  and social media cheerleaders too, I suppose... who are perpetually at each other’s throats?

I can’t even remember the last time the subject of a discussion at any social event or gathering so much as alluded to anything like the Panama Papers, the National Audit reports, the Delimara gas tanker, or any of the things they’ve been fighting about for the past year. And when the topic of Maltese politics does crop up, it is no longer even the subject of any argument. Everyone now agrees that the two parties are cut from the same cloth. Most are resigned to the undeniable fact that voting for either is a complete waste of time.

Yet to look at our 71 MPs yelling, hooting, banging their fists and hurling insults at each other…  you’d think they were arguing about the most crucial issues known to mankind. As though support for one and not the other was a matter of life and death. Just look at the images of Beppe Fenech Adami delivering an ‘eloquent’ speech in the House this week. Not even Orlando Furioso – who reportedly felled an entire forest in a fit of rage – could possibly work himself up into such unbridled fury... such hissing, spitting rage.

What on earth could he, and all the rest of them, be so angry about... seeing as nobody else in the country seems to know or care?

Let’s see now. Beppe apparently lost his cool when discussing an international investigation into money laundering, which involved large sums of money deposited into a locally-based company of which he was a fiduciary director. And rightly so, I might add. How dare anyone suggest that – as the person responsible at law – he should have any clue what was going on in that company, anyway? 

Well, that was round one. In round two, the fight was suddenly about whether or not the leaked images of Beppe Fenech Adami had been taken in the House with a mobile phone... at a time when the entire sitting was being broadcast live on Parliament TV. What can I say? The security breach of the century. Makes the Russians hacking the US Presidential election process look like a minor detail by comparison...

As for all the other outbursts and shenanigans which forced the Speaker to suspend the sitting multiple times... the bone of contention was for the most part a series of NAO reports which revealed numerous questionable government land transfers under both administrations. A year after the Gaffarena scandal, we now know that devaluing property to benefit party donors, as well as direct political intervention leading all the way to OPM, are not exceptions to the rule: they are the standard procedure for all sorts of government land deals, past and present... regardless of whether the Lands Minister was Jason Azzopardi or Michael Falzon.

Which raises a teenie-weenie little question. What are they fighting about, exactly? The honour of which of these two equally putrid and festering cesspits of corruption actually stinks the least? Doesn’t look like much of a contest to me...

Or maybe they’re just angry because they have nothing left to be truly angry about any more, except anger for its own sake. And so deeply are they immersed in their private (and largely invented) grievances, that they can’t understand why the rest of us no longer share their rage and resentment... or even, to be perfectly honest, understand it.

And you know how it is with anger: the sight of other people going about their own business, without even so much as thinking about politics... still less being utterly and totally absorbed by it, as we were in former decades... only enrages them more. 

Now, they’ve even coined a slogan to remind us all of the importance of sharing their anger... of feeling their pain. ‘Making Malta Hate’: it’s going to be our motto for when we take over the European Presidency next week... and for once, there is nothing about it I can even criticise. It’s brutal, perhaps... but so is the country we live in. If nothing else, that makes it honest: quite possibly, the only thing either party has ever been truly honest about.

So please: don’t mind the rest of us trying to enjoy our festive season, or anything. Just go right ahead, and wish each other another Hateful Christmas, and another Angry New Year.