Attenti al lupo

I have this recollection of travelling by train up to Verona and listening to the iconic Lucio Dalla in the early 80s and of seeing him 10 years later in Enna, Sicily, at one of his famous hideouts. I guess all things come to an end, though the wonderful thing about musicians and artists is that their legacy lives on.

Politicians also believe that they have to be remembered, but they tend to forget that more often than not, we really try very hard to forget that they even existed.

It has been a rather quiet week after a tumultuous electoral result for Lawrence Gonzi - the one-man contest of the year. Gonzi must be a very happy man, and judging by the smile on David Casa's face, so are the rest of the clan. If there was one positive thing to take away from all this, it was the taming of Franco Debono, who now appears to have lost his tongue, along with his interest in being a nuisance. Thank God for that.

Though now he is trying to stand for bird trappers just because he knows how to breed canaries. He has been such a bloody waste of time. If he resurfaces again, really we should just agree to ignore or else simply send him off to dine with the Sunday Times editor Steve Mallia and discuss fictional Tom Cruise stories.

I guess the two stories that really need to be looked at concern local councils.

It has been a war of attrition, with both sides attacking each other over allegations of abuse and corruption. It turns out that the local councils are a laboratory of nepotism and favouritism, where tenders are awarded in a manner which raises more questions than answers.

The very fact that Graziella Galea - the daughter of former PN minister Censu Galea and now mayor of St Paul's Bay - found nothing incorrect in awarding a tender in her council, together with others, to her uncle, is all the more strange.

The director responsible for local councils was quick to point out that there is a difference between those who issue a tender and those who work with the council.

The law states that if you issue a tender, you cannot do so to your next of kin but your uncle and aunt do not fall into this category.

Which basically means that if you decide to employ someone within the council, you may not employ your aunt or uncle if you wish.

The director of local councils is of course being very legalistic when he states that there is nothing illegal in the decisions taken by the St Paul's Bay council when it contracted Graziella Galea's uncle to collect garbage.

It shows that our local councils have a long way to go before we can say that the issue of political correctness is fully appreciated.

As Graziella Galea was trying to deflect as much attention as possible from her patch, another councillor - Julian Galea from the Sliema council - said, according to a recording, that he has a "phobia of Labourites" and that he pays Labourite employees working at his establishment less than Nationalist ones.

There is nothing new in this way of thinking, and going by the choice of people on government boards I would think that the 'Julian Galea mentality' is pervasive at the very highest echelons of the PN structure.

Julian Galea, who runs Il-Kantina Kafe in Valletta, has of course every right to make a fool of himself and profess political apartheid.  He is stupid enough to say out loud what others simply practise - starting from the government itself which has followed an apartheid policy when it comes to political appointees.

But you need not only be a Labourite to be shunned.  Being a MaltaToday editor or journalist makes you eligible for some Julian Galea 'sapore'. He is the only former Sliema Nationalist councillor to have decided to stand for re-election. I hope that he gets the highest  number of votes possible to prove that other people think the same way he does.

There is little doubt in my mind that there are people on both sides of the political divide who think that their adversaries are morons and lesser mortals.  Who hate and despise their opponents, and who think that world should only be ruled and inhabited by people of the same colour and thinking.

Regrettably, a lot of this thinking has been levelled against the Opposition, because traditionally they have championed the working class, and this is usually an easy target for ridicule.

The blogger who hails from hell - and who has now been told to tone down against MaltaToday - is renowned for taking them to the cleaners. But things are changing, and today, the sight of 'hamalli' is not restricted to one political party, judging by many of the political party gatherings. 

Galea is of course rather stupid to have said such a thing. If Labourites had any sense at all, they would boycott his cafeteria. Such things are common practice abroad.

The PN, after some serious contemplation, decided to ask Galea to apologise.

This is, of course, the latest gimmick. Apologise, and things will sort of cool down.

If I were Paul Borg Olivier, I would ask him to resign. But then again, Borg Olivier is the last person in the world to talk of resignations. Resignations are not part of the DNA of this breed of politicians.

When, some years ago, the Prime Minister's nephew Alexis Callus resigned from the Safi council after he left racist comments on a fascist website, we thought we were getting somewhere.

He had said, amongst other things: "Unfortunately, Dr Tonio Borg has become deputy prime minister of Malta and also deputy leader of the Nationalist Party.

"Therefore it has become harder to get a permit to find with certainty where Carmelo Borg Pisani is [buried]."

He went further: "If Turkey would consume the migrants from Africa (due to their cultural similarities), I think Turkey can become the compost heap of Europe and free our country from the unwanted waste," Callus wrote.

Callus is now back in the fold, representing the PN once again in the Safi local council elections after years of exclusion.

Politicians of all colours and hues imagine that we have short memories. But we do not.

The Labour party also has its fair share of recycled politicians. Joe Cili, a a former Labour minister who resigned following a MaltaToday story, is back as an election candidate.

Over 10 years ago, MaltaToday revealed how Joe Cilia was actively involved in the creation of firms headed by favoured partners which helped him cash in on tenders issued by the Ministry of Education and his secretariat. In 1997, Cilia allowed one of his partners to win a tender for the supply of medals for the 1997 FISEC games. Using false names, the bidder was awarded a tender for Lm1,698, who would then share all profits with Notary Cilia. Further revelations showed Cilia had used Lm500 of that payment to invest in the share capital of the catering management at the National Swimming Pool, part of his portfolio as Parliamentary Secretary - a man with short-sighted horizons, his political career was soon to flounder.

And later in 2003, MaltaToday reported how Cilia - then a former Labour Parliamentary Secretary - was questioned by police on grounds of sexual harassment.

As Lucio Dalla once said: 'Attenti al lupo'.