Beyond good and evil

I think it’s fair to say that I never had much admiration or respect for Maltese politicians. But there have been a few exceptions in the past. 

I may not have been Eddie Fenech Adami’s biggest fan, for instance; I may not have agreed with the way he imposed his own moral diktats onto the Nationalist Party (and, up to a point, on the country as a whole). But Eddie did at least have gravitas; a sense of decorum; a modicum of tact and propriety; and – as even his political adversaries will grudgingly concede – a solid grasp of political strategy. 

These are all qualities that denote intelligence; and just as stupidity and brutish ignorance are qualities to be abjured, intelligence must perforce be respected... even if it translates into ideas and policies with which we disagree.

Eddie demonstrated such intelligence on countless occasions; but perhaps the most important and defining example was his ideological reformation of the PN immediately after 1977. He immediately understood that the only way to topple Mintoff was to eat into the Labour Party’s share of the vote – to sweep the carpet of socialism from under the MLP’s feet, as it were.

A bit of context is important: 1977 is a long time ago, and most have now forgotten that the coup which overthrew George Borg Olivier as party leader had actually begun a couple of years earlier. Eddie Fenech Adami was one of a number of Nationalist MPs – including Guido de Marco, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, etc. – who voted against their own party line to approve Mintoff’s Republican amendment in the House.

It was an act of defiance against a party leadership style which had by that point led the PN too far down a blind alley. Borg Olivier (who had his own good qualities too, to be fair) was perceived as too weak and too politically outmoded to actually stand a chance of winning in 1981. It was generally understood among serious Nationalists that the time had come to change both leader and strategy. And by this point, you should already be able to see where I’m heading with all this.

In a nutshell, the PN of 40 years ago understood what it seems utterly incapable of understanding today. Political pique, on its own, may have its short-term uses... but it is not, nor cannot ever be, a winning formula. 

So Eddie Fenech Adami reinvented his party to make it appealing not just to diehard Nationalists – whose support he knew he could always count on anyway – but to that much more crucial voter segment that would otherwise vote Labour. And he did this so successfully that he won his first election in 1981... and every other election until 2004, with the solitary exception of 1996. 

It took Labour until 2013, no less, to regain lost ground... and even then, only because the PN, under Gonzi, unaccountably chose to go about things in the clean opposite way.

Unlike Eddie, Lawrence Gonzi was entirely uninterested in formulating a winning political narrative that would appeal to any sector that wasn’t a clone of himself. He seemed to think that victory in elections was some kind of birthright, to which he was entitled simply by virtue of being party leader. So much so, that when polls began to indicate an insurmountable Muscat lead before the 2013 election, his reaction was reminiscent of someone who couldn’t comprehend why his or her partner had dumped him. He was frantic, perplexed, angry, bewildered... visibly going through the seven stages of bereavement. 

Even today, the Nationalists who now hail Salvu Mallia as their new champion are making the same fundamental mistake. They fail to realise that political allegiance is not due to them by right; it has to be earned. And you don’t earn it by rubbishing anything that doesn’t fit with your own prejudices. Actually, it’s the other way around... you earn it by reaching out across the divide, like Eddie did. 

If people like myself were content to vote Nationalist, in spite of misgivings, for so many years... it was because we could see with our own eyes that the PN was a serious party led by serious people on the basis of serious strategies. Sadly, all that is now invisible... yet they still expect automatic support: and when they don’t get it, their first line of response is to round on their critics and try to maul them to pieces... even though this is precisely what cost them the sheer extent of the 2013 defeat.

Of course, it doesn’t help that this strategy is nothing but an embodiment of one of Mintoff’s most odious and divisive slogans: ‘min mhux maghna, kontra taghna’ (if you’re not with us, you’re against us). In the absence of any real strategic thinking, bullying has become the only tactic the PN even know. And now that the playground bullies have literally taken over the entire asylum under its incredibly weak new leader... what hope can the PN possibly have of repeating Eddie’s success now?

None whatsoever. Like Borg Olivier they have led themselves too far down that blind alley... only this time they don’t have an Eddie Fenech Adami (or anyone remotely comparable) to lead them out again. 

Instead, they have Salvu Mallia. And they must be very proud of him, too, because it is difficult to imagine someone who embodies that Mintoff quote more brazenly and pugnaciously than he. In that recent interview he gave to The Times, several of his less important remarks were given undue prominence... his pro-choice argument, for instance, which had the inevitable consequence of banishing any serious discussion on the topic for the foreseeable future. 

But what struck me was not that at all. It was the clear continuation of the same ludicrous narrative the PN has been trying to spin about itself ever since 2004. Consider these quotes:

“Joseph Muscat is an evil man” [...] “For me this is a battle against evil. No dictator is ever up front about their intentions to screw you. Dictators pretend to be nice. If you look back at Adolf Hitler, he was very progressive. The first campaign against smoking was carried out by the Nazis. Society was affluent. That was Adolf Hitler. Was he good? I don’t think so!”

Hmm. ‘A battle against evil’, huh? Last time I heard that expression was when re-reading JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings recently. Of course, there is a slight difference. The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy novel, steeped in a literary tradition that frames complex themes against the backdrop of a simple ‘good versus evil’ plot structure. I am more than happy to accept that in a work of fiction... but in reality? A battle between good and evil? Seriously?

As for the implication that Muscat is an evil dictator on the scale of Adolf Hitler... or who might grow to that scale in time... I mean, honestly. Why not just go the whole hog and say that he is none other than the spawn of Satan himself? Why not claim he has a ‘666’ birthmark hidden somewhere on his person?

Sorry, but this is not serious at all. It is ludicrous. Not just because it paints an unbelievably childish picture of Joseph Muscat as some kind of Dark Lord in a tower somewhere, plotting to cover the world in a second darkness... but, even more so, because it projects the PN, and Salvu in particular, as crusaders in shining armour, fighting a desperate war against the forces of evil. 

This, by the way, from someone who describes himself as ‘enlightened’, and anyone who disagrees with him as ‘an ignorant asshole’. 

Now: what do you think happened when I tried to draw Salvu Mallia’s attention to the sheer infantilism of his thinking? His immediate reaction was to call me a ‘lier’ [sic], ‘condiscending’ [sic], an ‘asshole’ [the only word he seems to know how to spell], and, much more seriously... ‘Glenn beddinfield thinly disguised’. Throughout our little discussion, he consistently insinuated that I am somehow ‘on the take’... on Muscat’s payroll... a paid Labour agent, and so on and so forth.

Now: I will take a lot of shit from a lot of people. I took shit from Glenn Bedingfield, when he called me out on a stupid comment I had passed about Michelle Muscat...  and I didn’t even respond. 

But I will not take this kind of shit from Salvu Mallia or anyone else. Not now, not ever. Mallia might find this difficult to understand, but we don’t all rely on having ‘our’ party in power for income. I have never been given a single contract, a single favour, a single ‘position of trust’, a single consultancy or a single anything... not from any Labour government, nor from any Nationalist one either. I have never even considered working in the public sector, because it would conflict with my job as an independent political commentator. 

As a result, I struggle financially (as all my friends and family can amply confirm) but I would not have it any other way.

If Salvu Mallia thinks he is entitled to just crawl out from under a stone and tarnish other people’s credibility that way – when, to all intents and purposes, he talks and acts like the equivalent of the local village drunk – well, can you just imagine what this man would be like if he is ever entrusted with any political power?

Honestly, though. To think the PN would have reduced itself to this...