New government, same old crap

Last Tuesday I watched Bondiplus for the first time since the election. I wrote an article about it, which you can still read online, so I won't waste time going over the same points here.

But having just re-read my own article this morning, I realise I left out a rather important detail. At various points Lou Bondi asked the prime minister about his government's plans for Gozo: about cruise liners, for instance, and why these don't stop there more often (an absolutely riveting question, by the way, which I am sure had all Gozitan viewers on the edges of their seats).

He also asked about the dearth of employment opportunities on the sister island, and enquired what happened to an electoral promise to explore the possibility of a yacht marina anywhere apart from Hondoq ir-Rummien.

Oddly, however, Lou didn't even so much as allude to what is arguably the single most pertinent and controversial aspect the government's plans for Gozo: the proposal to link the two islands by means of a bridge or tunnel (depending on which of two highly implausible scenarios you actually believe).

Okay, I admit a journalist cannot be expected to ask every single question one would like him to ask, especially when the same journalist (and incidentally I use that word rather liberally in this context) also tried to cram so much into a programme lasting just under an hour.

But then again, it was Lou's decision to base so much of this particular edition on Gozo. So why would he omit to ask the most obviously relevant question (while asking so many others that were neither obvious nor even remotely relevant to anything)? Was it an innocent oversight? And if not, what interest might Lou Bondi have had in distracting the general public from an issue which is likely to prompt major environmental protests in the near future, of the kind we haven't seen in this country since the 2005 decision to extend the development zones by 12%?

Let's see now. One possibility is that Lou Bondi might have been keen to avoid in any way embarrassing his guest... for instance, by publicly raising the issue of how the Chinese company engaged to conduct the feasibility study for the project also turns out to have been recently blacklisted by the World Bank.

Who knows? Perhaps it was even agreed beforehand not to raise this particular topic during the program. Perhaps it was a condition imposed by the prime minister himself - and if so, let's not pretend to be shocked by the apparent cosy relationship between interviewer and interviewee. (I interviewed Judge Giovanni Bonello this week, and there was likewise a condition attached to the interview. I have no problem with that at all, provided all cards are placed on the table... and in fact I made it a point to mention the condition towards the beginning of the interview.)

But of course, Bondi has his own way of doing journalism. And those of us who haven't traded their memories for political favours in the recent past will surely have been reminded of a remarkably similar strategy employed by the same Lou Bondi to defend Lawrence Gonzi from almost identical accusations in 2010.

Remember? Back then, news had just come out that Lahmeyer International - the consultancy firm engaged by the Gonzi administration, which recommended the BWSC technology for the Delimara power station extension project - had likewise been blacklisted by the same World Bank.

Oh, the fuss the Labour Party kicked up about that particular incident at the time! Quite rightly, I might add... as the stench of corruption that pervaded that entire episode still induces a slight bout of nausea in me to this day, and to be honest I am still perplexed at how a government which sailed into power three months ago on the promise of a full investigation into that incident has not yet taken any steps to bring the guilty parties to justice. Perhaps it was just something they said before the election and forgot all about immediately afterwards. (I mean, governments have a lot of things on their minds... surely, they're entitled to 'forget' an occasional electoral promise here and there.)

Anyway. It will not come a surprise that the same Bondi would use his prominence on state TV (so reminiscent of the character Prothero from the movie V for Vendetta, by the way) to mount a tooth-and-nail defence of the entire Gonzi administration on this contentious project. After all, he did exactly the same with Arriva and with any other issue over which his beloved Nationalist government had to face any form of criticism whatsoever.

And here is where the last pieces of the jigsaw can be seen falling into place. For when it came to dealing with both the BWSC saga in 2011 and the Gozo bridge affair in 2013, Bondi employed exactly the same strategy with exactly the same goal in mind: to defend his beloved prime minister from embarrassment and to distract us all from the possibility that something might be rotten in an otherwise Perfect, Idyllic State.

The only difference is the identity of the beloved prime minister in question; and on closer scrutiny... well, it turns out to be not much of a difference at all. 

We all know how it works: the players may change from time to time, but the game remains the same. In the days when the man dishing out the goodies was Lawrence Gonzi, Bondi would regularly abuse his virtual omnipresence on state TV to keep Gonzi in power at all costs - yes, even to the extent of attempting to cause a major panic on the eve of an election, in the hope of swaying a few uncertain voters at the 11th hour (and in flagrant breach of the law on corrupt practices... but it's a stupid law anyway, so who cares).

And it didn't stop there: Lou has habitually used his programme - which by the way has already bounced back onto TVM1, after having been briefly relegated to TVM2 (isn't it amazing how fast the back-scratching machine can work in this country when it is to the government's benefit?) - to constantly turn the tables on anyone who has failed to fall prostrate before the throne of the GonziPN administration.

Such critics were routinely invited as 'guests' on Bondiplus, where they were routinely mauled, savaged and humiliated through a series of orchestrated manoeuvres which invariably also involved the CEO of Public Broadcasting Services.

For example, the Lou Bondi we all saw on Bondiplus last Tuesday was very different from the Lou Bondi who had tried (unsuccessfully) to harangue and intimidate Franco Debono in January 2011 - but who on that occasion got a good deal more than he gave, much to his own visible chagrin.

It was, however, the same Lou Bondi who so fawningly drooled over Lawrence Gonzi whenever the former prime minister was his guest on the same programme.

Oh, and in case you might be thinking that Bondi's obsequious treatment of Muscat last Tuesday (at one point he showered the prime minister with praise for his 'progressive agenda' and even asked, "Shall I start with an easy or difficult question?" PUKE!) was the direct result of his own appointment to that silly national festivities board... Well, think again.

Sitting on a board to organize national festivities is a meaningless little trifle. But dominating PBS to the exclusion of all others - as Where's Everybody? has done since the late 1990s - oh, that's something else entirely.

And this is what lurks behind that infamous little backroom deal between Lou and Joseph. Like Little Tommy Tucker, Lou Bondi has been 'persuaded' to sing for his supper (or at least to play the guitar) under Labour, just as he had done under the PN.

And guess what? The people who howled the loudest against Bondi's abuse of state media under Gonzi - and who voted Labour in large numbers precisely to change that same old shabby 'way of doing politics' - are now at the forefront of the crowd as it ecstatically applauds Joseph Muscat for doing exactly the same thing.

So I suppose they can now expect all the same bullshit they fought against until last March: unpopular or controversial government actions or policies will continue to be painstakingly ignored by PBS, or else somehow sugar-coated to be made palatable or deliberately distorted beyond recognition, all by the same blatantly conspicuous coterie of hand-picked, government friendly journalists, who hijacked all the official state media organs almost 20 years ago and have been there ever since.

So I'm sorry to puncture your little bubble, but this is not Malta taghna lkoll. It's actually more like 'Malta still belongs to all the same A-holes'. And if that is not a problem to you... Well, it is a problem to me.

And I don't think I'm the one being inconsistent here.