Maria l-Maws speaks out
Evarist Bartolo launched himself into the leadership fray with some heavy presence in yesterday’s newspapers. Here are some choice quotations from his interview with The Sunday Times.
“The fact that Dr Sant stayed on obviously prevented the party from learning all the lessons and moving on. But the way things happened and the kind of people who contested the leadership in 2003….I personally thought he was still the best person”.
You have to see this in the light of the fact that Maria l-Maws was thinking of contesting that leadership election, but when Alfred Sant changed his mind about resigning (what a surprise) he decided not to challenge him. ‘The kind of people who contested the leadership in 2003’ were Anglu Farrugia and John Attard Montalto. Maria l-Maws put himself forward for the deputy leadership but was beaten to it. And now he thinks that the delegates who didn’t choose him as deputy leader are going to choose him as leader. Oh, self-delusion.
“I think even if you analyse our last campaign, whether we like it or not I think we give ourselves a very tribal image – that if you don’t form part of this tribe you’re not welcome….it’s as though we put up obstacles to prevent people from joining in.”
Damn right. And all they needed was Charles Mangion shouting about DNA and Michael Falzon screeching about the lions of change – that, and all those scary people waving torca flags and frightening the horses.
“I think logistically we weren’t as organised as they were. It’s one of the things on which we need to get our act together.”
Super – the first thing you should do is sack Jason Micallef. He hasn’t a clue what a campaign is, and he’s too busy fixing his hair to work out the meaning of strategy. The secretary-general is the be-all and end-all of party organisation, especially in a campaign, and Jason Micallef was a poor shadow of Joe Saliba. Saliba may not have much of a hairstyle, but he knows how to win an election.
“There was an almost complete absence from the Internet, which is terrible. I ask my communications students at the university where they get their information from. There was a time when they would say TV, radio, friends and newspapers, in that order. Now the first medium is Internet, then friends, TV, radio and newspapers. If you’re not where they are, someone else is filling that gap. And the Nationalist Party filled it very well.”
Well, quite frankly, what did Evarist expect from the party that, in government, has made it its mission to put the entire country on line? Meanwhile, the Labour Party had a leader who still buys his books by hunting for them in shops instead of hitting the Amazon button, and who has never, not once in a single speech or article that I can remember, mentioned information technology. Famously, he doesn’t own even a mobile telephone or a television, though he does have one of those – what do you call them? – computers.
“I think there was over-confidence and complacency that we were going to win….that people were so fed up that Labour would win. It wasn’t like that.”
Sack Jason Micallef. He did it. Ask the book-makers.
“If you look at the result, our comfort zone is still the south. But demographically, people are moving to the north. So that presents us with a serious problem because our social base is shrinking. Unless we make all the necessary changes to be present in the north, which means being more present with the aspiring middle class, this party will remain a big party but one for the minority.”
There was a big debate about this on one of the threads on this blog. I said pretty much the same thing that Maria l-Maws did here, but I also added something else: that the quickest way for the Labour Party to fast-forward itself to success at the polls is by getting itself a middle class leader instead of yet another working class one or worse, a working class boy made good in a suit and decorated with Harvard certificates and DBAs from God knows where. The so-called middle classes (the real thing not the aspirationals) can sniff out a fraud at 50 paces. Middle class people don’t trust working classes leaders, no matter how they’re dressed up to look like something else, end of story.
“If the person who takes the leadership does not realise that it’s not a question of recovering a few thousand votes but also a question of making Labour the party of the upwardly-mobile, with which big parts of the middle class feel comfortable, then Labour is doomed to remain a tribal minority – closed in on itself, geared rather towards not losing ground than to gaining ground.”
Yes, I agree with Maria l-Maws there. He’s right. But then, he teaches communications, so why wasn’t he picking up on all this before and ramming it down Jason Micallef’s silly little throat?
“I think that just as Alfred Sant and Charles Mangion did, the other deputy leader should resign. This also means he should not be running for the leadership post. Even the party president and the secretary-general should step down. During the campaign, it was obvious that there were five people who were in charge of what was going on – the president, the three leaders and the secretary-general.”
Yes, but they were there for the glory, running about from Kennedy Grove to Buskett to Maghtab dump dressed like black crows and with the demeanour of graveside mourners. They thought they were going to win, and they wanted to make damn sure that the entire country knew from their television screens who the persons responsible for victory really were. Now that they are responsible for the loss, they’re not quite sure how to behave. One has Irrevocably Resigned and plans to live on through his Poodle. Mangion says he will resign but is acting as leader for now. Michael Falzon is – unbelievably – asking delegates to make him party leader when he was a miserable failure even as deputy leader. Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi has removed his nun-in-civvies persona from the public domain until it is safe to come out to play again. And as for Jason Micallef – sigh.
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I think that Varist ‘Maria l-Maws’ is toast, whichever way one slices it…
http://homeappliances.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/villaware-mickey.jpg
I think that the MLP top brass are an ungrateful bunch. I could not help noticing that no one did even mention Mintoff’s name let alone ask him to patecipate in the ‘celebrations’ organised by the MLP for the 31st March public.
It seems that they all agreed not to include the main protagonist of this ‘great’ event.
Is he an embarrassment to the party which he founded?
This is an excerpt from Evarist Bartolo’s interview carried today in The Times…
“Mr Bartolo said he was able to win debates in his own firm but calm manner. He was able to make people make sense of complex subjects in a language which everybody could understand. He was also able to listen, admit his mistakes and learn from them.”
If it’s not a dig at AS, I don’t know what is…
@ John Schembri
Maybe they invited The Learned Doctorrrr Licari…ya know being is birthday an’all…
@ Daphne
Varist did not read the signs of the times when he famously told Sant to call Mintoff’s bluff. How’s that for an accurate reading of the situation?
Perhaps we are in the situation we are today thanks to Varist’s advice to Sant. Should we be thankful?
ara l maltastar hiiiii: http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msrv/msFullArt.asp?an=19933
[Moderator – This is either a very bad April Fools’ joke or the Malta Labour Party is setting up a porn racket. The domain name for the ‘TV channel’ was registered by one David Vella, using an address at Mile End and a telephone number registered to the Malta Labour Party (21255210). See for yourselves here.]
@ flabbergasted
Why are you so flabbergasted at this titillating piece of news! Damu jghidulna hames gimghat THE ONLY WAY IS UP tal-lejber…
Ivan M…is this a girly comment??
If so, sto nella tema…
“flabbergasted on Mar 31, 2008
ara l maltastar hiiiii: http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msrv/msFullArt.asp?an=19933
[Moderator – This is either a very bad April Fools’ joke or the Malta Labour Party is setting up a porn racket. The domain name for the ‘TV channel’ was registered by one David Vella, using an address at Mile End and a telephone number registered to the Malta Labour Party (21255210). See for yourselves here.]”
To be specific, a reverse-check on the Maltacom online directory shows that the telephone number 21255210 is actually the Maltastar telephone number.
MLP PoRn channel? Could it really be? Why would they not have named it PRn channel, then, because it would have shown the brains behind it, PeRhaps? :)
[Moderator – Try pr0n.]
Meerkat :) it’s more something a guy would say :D
@ Ivan M
I am a girl with a very deep voice ;-)
Monderator – “[Moderator – This is either a very bad April Fools’ joke or the Malta Labour Party is setting up a porn racket. The domain name for the ‘TV channel’ was registered by one David Vella, using an address at Mile End and a telephone number registered to the Malta Labour Party (21255210). See for yourselves here.]”
This is what Maltastar.com had to say today: “… Over 2,000 individuals also registered to the website http://www.shn-tv.com, by submitting their e-mail address to get “the latest details and be the first to know the launching date” of the Maltese adult channel. A few of those who registered and later realised it could have been an April Fool hoax called maltastar.com offices to check whether their e-mail addresses will be made public. No one needs to worry about this. Despite the fact that those who registered did so voluntarily, the list of e-mails was deleted on Tuesday at 1930hrs, at the same time that this report was published. maltastar.com clarifies that the list will not be used in any way, and no record of the e-mail addresses will be kept.”
Forget the 2000 people who submitted their email addresses to the site. As usual, MLP have not only shown what a base mentality they’ve got, but also that they see no further than the tip of their nose.
Could it really be that they did not think that people from all over the world could access the site registration information, and trace it back to the Malta Labour Party itself? Did they not think that that was an embarrassment not only to the MLP itself, but that it also makes Malta a laughing stock? (As if they haven’t done so enough, already!)
Imagine people saw ONLY yesterday’s report and not today’s stating that it was an April Fool’s joke. (Incidentally – why did the
report run on 31st March?)
Well, I suppose we couldn’t expect better from a political party whose ex-leader’s last thought before going under the anaesthetic last December was “here I am, whilst Sarkozy is having fun with Carla Bruni”.
PeRhaps yes, it was a PR*ckish PR*t who was the brains behind this base joke, without giving PRior consideration to the consequences of his actions. (It would be a man, wouldn’t it? – With apologies to all the decent men out there!)
@Amanda Mallia
Come on! It was only a lame April Fool’s joke! All April Fool jokes are lame (else the Fool in April Fool would be scopeless). I thought it a better joke than TVM’s one (Josette substituting Morena for EuroVision)
Yes, most April Fool’s jokes are lame, but at least they all appear on 1st April not 31st March.
It’s the tiny details …
Re: the maltastar April fool’s joke. Hasn’t it occurred to anyone to comment that this joke is only possible in Malta? Yes, because it is only in this country in the whole of Europe where adults accept meekly, sheepishly and willingly to be told by sanctimonious censors what to watch and what to read. Only in this country do adults allow themselves to be treated like children by other adults and prevented from watching what is not good for them in case they use their hands to do bad things which can make them go blind. Only in this country are adults content to be prevented by other adults from living their own life and to divorce or not divorce when their marriages have long been extinguished. Yes, it is the last heroic bastion of Catholicism in Europe and it will now continue to be so for at least another five years because it is in the political interest of some to let obscurantism flourish. The last fortress, a Masada, defying the whole continent of which it deludes itself of forming part. Who says this paradise is no longer “Malta fior del mondo”? Perhaps even the moderator will consider it opportune to censor this post…
[Moderator – I’m no fan of obscurantism either. I think the title of that article says it all: ‘…in talks…’ as though they are negotiating the nuclear disarmament of North Korea.]
@ amrio
Hey long time no see! I sort of waited for you to tick me off or give me a copy for my bringing this blog down with my girly comments but Ivan M deputised for you admirably ;-)
@ amrio & Amanda
Who can guarantee that the e-mail addressess were actually destroyed? Did anyone from the general public or from the Data Protection Department attend to such a process?
Can anyone guarantee that such information has not been held by anyone?
This is a dangerous probability.
@Abuse of information
I agree – having an email address gatherer in the spoof adult website was silly, albeit mildly dangerous. But after all, you, like myself, has written entries to this blog and we have also supplied email adresses to Daphne (or whoever). I don’t think that neither the owners of this blog nor maltastar will do anything illegal with these addresses.
The worse that can happen is to receive lots of MLP memorabilia in your email account. Easy, just set the maltastar email address as spam…
WHY were they gathering email addresses in the first place? That’s the question they should be answering. They absolutely had no need to.
re maltastar april fool’s joke.
i guess there is nothing wrong with the joke itself. what i think was in bad taste was the fact that they collected personal information. It added nohing to the joke itself, so why did they bother?
@Abuse of Information: I wouldn’t worry too much about data protection – any email address people typed in there is probably a secret one they use to chat-cheat on their spouses anyhow! In any case I doubt whether they contravened any data protection provision – I think that Act has a requirement that the data must be identifiable with a person to fall within its scope.
Of more concern is the thought that those 2000 gullible fools may have contributed to electing MPs in Parliament…not that I blame them for falling for it. As somebody pointed out, the only country with free and widespread internet use in the civilised world where that scenario would be plausible is Malta!
I think the giveaway was the name of the proposed channel – how are people supposed to connect SHN TV, with the Maltese words ‘shun’ or ‘shuna’? Pity someone had already thought of FOX TV.
@ Jason Spiteri
How is [email protected] not identifiable?
But I ask again, WHY did they collect them? Was there any valid reason, from a practical joke point of view?
How can I trust a party that cannot even do a practical joke in good taste or well organised?
1) It’s published a day too early – bad organisation.
2) It’s easily traceable to them – bad planning.
3) It collects (questionably) personal data for no apparent good reason – doubtful motives.