And in the end, the ‘klikka’ wins

Did you hear that? It sounded like... guns... thunder... or maybe just the collective howl of shock and horror of some 36,000 Labour voters, upon learning of the appointment of Lou Bondi to a 'board of national festivities' by the government they had so recently voted in themselves.

Personally I can't help but think their indignation is justified. By appearing to 'reward' a man who has taken such incredible pains to make himself an object of hate among the same Labour supporters, Muscat has simultaneously fired off multiple messages to his party grassroots... one very simple one being that, contrary to his own repeated promise of change only three months ago, the prime minister fully intends to carry on maintaining the status quo: 'klikka' and all.

From this perspective, the same decision can be seen to crown an apparent failure by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat... a failure to inculcate a culture of 'meritocracy' that he had also promised before the election... a failure that was already discernible in the altogether less contentious appointment of Jason Micallef, a former PL secretary-general, to chair the V18 election.

But with the Bondi appointment, Muscat has taken the same general concept several steps further. Considering how very central the notion of a hidden 'clique' had been to the Labour Party's successful campaign - and how Bondi himself had constantly been portrayed as the same clique's official 'face', through his quasi-Orwellian omnipresence on the small screen... and everywhere else, for that matter; including a somewhat larger screen at a Santana concert - the decision to simply keep the goodies flowing in his direction almost gives the impression that there hasn't been a change in government at all.

Incredibly, this is the ultimate message Muscat's government chose to send out to the entire country this week: immortalised by the astonishing sight of Lou Bondi himself, all smiles and on his best behaviour, rubbing shoulders with Muscat around a boardroom table for all the world like a schoolboy who had just received a prize from his headmaster.

Let's face it: it would have been a stunning sight even if it hadn't come so hard on the heels of a campaign which had demolished GonziPN precisely over the same tendency to reward the richly undeserving.

At this particular juncture in time, however, it can only come across as 'proof' that the notorious 'klikka' reigns on under Muscat, just as it had reigned under Gonzi. And what is that, if not the equivalent of turning round to us and saying: "Remember all that stuff I said before the election about meritocracy? About returning the country to its rightful owners? About putting an end to the klikka? Oh, I was only joking you know..."

Meanwhile, I have met Joseph Muscat on a number of occasions and can confirm that he is by no means a stupid man. (one of stupidest mistakes made by the previous administration's was, in fact, to underestimate his intelligence) And as it is a mark of intelligence that one's actions and decisions will be properly though-through before they are taken - as opposed to afterwards - I can only assume that he must surely have foreseen the extent to which he was about to shock and infuriate his own support-base.

So why would an intelligent man risk alienating so many of his own supporters for so little gain? And what did he think he stood to gain, anyway? Predictably, Muscat himself views his action as a display of magnanimity on his part... that he was trying illustrate how his new Labour government is so very full of the milk of human kindness, that it would be willing to forgive and forget even the most unthinkably heinous affronts in its drive to end the culture of political division.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, he could even be sincere in his claim that this is all part of a master-plan to 'change' Malta - though I, for one, find it hard to appreciate a 'change' which leaves everything more or less exactly as it was before.

Besdies: there may even be some merit to the idea that a course of unpopular action that would, in time, serve to heal a political rift that we all know is past its sell-by date anyway.

But there are limits to how far this Baby-Muppet sort of approach can be taken. For one thing, the culture of political hatred is still very much alive and spewing venom in this country; and Lou Bondi has long been viewed as a cog of that life-support machine (the one that goes 'Pee! Bee! Ess!) it is plugged into.

Allowing him to hitch on the government's bandwagon at this stage is therefore a little like that anecdote of the frog and the scorpion in a film whose name now escapes me: it can only end in tears.

Besides, if we interpret the move as a clinical political manoeuvre to silence an outspoken critic... well, it could even be considered astute, but wasn't that exactly what the Nationalists so often used to do in the past, and around 167,000 people voted against on March 9?

And this is the problem that Muscat, for all his intelligence, may not have anticipated. For even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on absolutely everything... what he has just gone and done is so very similar to the previous administration's way of doing politics, that it has effectively legitimised the entire culture of favours, backscratching and nepotism we used to associate with GonziPN until very recently.

Surely, there will be a price to pay.