Seriously? You must be joking...

It must be getting hard for newspapers to come up with convincing April Fools’ day jokes these days. I mean, just try and spot the fake headline in any newspaper right now. ‘UK threatens war with Spain over Gibraltar’, for instance. Last year, something like that would have been called out at a glance. Go on, pull the other one, we would all have said. And then what, anyway? Germany invades Poland...? 

Yet there it was: a real news item, not a fake one. And while it might not have been the most well-grounded story ever written – ultimately, it was based on a throwaway comment by a single former British PM – it certainly wasn’t intended as a joke. As we speak, there are even discussions as to whether the Royal Navy is up to the same strength as it was during the Falklands War in the 1980s (oddly, however, no one is asking the same question about the Spanish Armada. Have they even rebuilt their fleet since Sir Francis Drake destroyed it utterly in 1588, I wonder?)

But in any case, it is clear that satirists and pranksters now have some serious competition on their hands. ‘Fake news’ may have conquered the Internet... but ‘real news’ remains far more surreal than anything the limited human imagination can possibly concoct. So it stands to reason that, if reality has come to resemble fiction so much... ‘fiction’ will start to seem increasingly more realistic by comparison.

The Times, for instance, decided to base its annual April Fool joke on a somewhat recognisable scenario. “The Prime Minister is mulling an August general election, as polls show a ‘walkover’ victory for the Labour Party,” it reported.

“Surveys carried out this week have shown a spike in support for Labour, with one poll showing the party stands to win by a majority of over 40,000 votes...”

By early afternoon, The Times had updated its story to explain that... ‘Gotcha, folks! We were only kidding...” And yet, within the space of just 24 hours, nearly all the supposedly ‘fictitious’ elements of the fake story were validated by reality.

The Prime Minister did, in fact, drop his strongest hint to date about the election date immediately after the story was published. Not in the middle of August, granted. But only around eight weeks later, in November. 

I’d say that’s pretty a darn accurate prediction, for what was supposed to be an April Fools’ joke. As for the rest of the fictitious details: well, there may be no polls suggesting a 40,000 majority... but there are plenty of polls suggesting that Labour does, in fact, enjoy an all-but unassailable lead. 

One more or one less indicator – be it real or fake – doesn’t really alter that scenario much. So the basic premise of The Time’s ‘joke’ – i.e., that the PN seems headed for a second electoral drubbing – can hardly be described as a joke at all. It is more a case of repackaging reality in terms which are only vaguely satirical.

Of course, it can hardly escape notice that all this unfolds against h9a very real contextual backdrop. For the past few months, the PN has been somewhat busy launching veiled attacks on its own deputy leader, Mario de Marco... who just happens to also be the chair of The Times’ board of governors. Funny, isn’t, it, that the same newspaper would choose to run a ‘joke’ which – however you look at it – also showcases the very real weakness of the PN under its present leadership?

OK, OK, maybe I’ve watched a few too many conspiracy theory videos on Youtube. Maybe that joke’s uncanny resemblance to Malta’s actual electoral landscape was not intended so... deliberately. But the same cannot be said for the second April Fools’ joke that caught my eye. In fact, the Electoral Commission is still technically obliged to process Lovin Malta’s application to register as a political party... the fact that it was submitted as part of an elaborate hoax is neither here nor there.

Then there’s the small matter of a 52-point electoral manifesto, launched as part of the same ‘joke’. Admittedly, it becomes a 51-point manifesto, after you weed out the only electoral promise that is clearly 100% satirical.  But still: you try coming up with 51 realistic electoral pledges, and see how far you get. 

What struck me, however, was the level of detail in the individual proposals. Let’s pick one at random: 

“7. In our first year, we will introduce measures to ensure private companies pay men and women equally for the same jobs. We will also make paternity and maternity leave equal. We will incentivise boardroom diversity through tax credits. We will also set up a commission for reproductive rights which will be tasked with studying and proposing legislation reform on related matters.”

One might enquire why reproductive rights got bundled with equal pay issues (and not, for instance, health)... but at least, it’s there. This is the first time I’ve ever heard a local ‘political party’ call for a realistic debate on such a basic issue in Malta: and such a sorely needed debate, too; as evidenced by this morning’s case of a botched abortion attempt using a kitchen knife soaked in gin.

But there you have it. Our ‘serious’ parties never bothered discussing serious issues before. It had to be a ‘joke’ party to seriously put it on the agenda for the first time.

Here’s another: “14. We will encourage the 're-greening' of developed areas, aiming to be the first government to leave Malta with more ODZ land, instead of less. We will also impose a measure by which any ODZ land committed to an important development will have to be offset by the re-greening of an area three times the size.”

To many prospective voters in the next election, this touches on a deeply-rooted and primal (in every sense of the word) concern. And it’s not just about trees and endemic species of lizard, either. The reality we live in today is that neither of the two parties can be trusted to ever pull the brake on an increasingly unsustainable and unstoppable development drive. We can all see the effects with our own eyes: entire communities are confined to ever more congested and polluted areas, with no public open space to speak of anywhere. 

Whether Lovin Malta’s actual proposal is doable in practice is naturally up for debate... you have to actually have ‘an area three times the size’ to be able to ‘re-green’ it – but there can be little doubt that this promise speaks directly to a pivotal electoral niche that has so far been utterly ignored and neglected by both the two main parties.

We all know why, too: as one scandal after another has repeatedly lain bare, both Labour and PN are deep in the pockets of the same construction and development lobby that benefits from the status quo. So once again: we are looking at a serious problem that our supposedly ‘serious’ parties have so far both been unwilling or unable to ever solve. 

And the people proposing to do something about it? They’re the jokers, naturally. The ones only a fool would ever take seriously.

Anyway: I could literally just pick out any other random electoral pledge, and the same point would apply every time. I might not agree with all the proposals myself (or to be more accurate: I might not have agreed, had this been a real manifesto instead of a joke)... but one thing flies right at you off the page as you read. 

This ‘joke’ manifesto raises issues and makes proposals you will simply never find in any of the ones you will soon have a chance to actually vote for. And it extends to the fake campaign video, too. How many of our real parties ever take the trouble to seek out candidates or spokespersons from Malta’s growing number of ethnic minority groups? Is there anyone at all, in the ranks of either Labour or PN (or even AD and PD for that matter) who is in any way representative of Malta’s ethnic sub-Saharan African communities, for instance? Or who any way represents the tens of thousands of foreigners now permanently residing in Malta?

These people might not have a vote – yet – but they live here, work here, pay taxes here... and all of them are directly affected by the actions and decisions of Maltese governments. Is it even conceivable that all our mainstream parties would continue pretending they simply don’t exist at all... even this far into the 21st century?

I guess it is. I guess it had to be a fake party (with a fake manifesto) to make serious promises about things which have serious effects on people in the real world. The ‘serious’ parties have certainly never done it before... and left to their own devices, they clearly never will.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Which is the real-life scenario, and which the April Fool’s joke?