What’s to become of Jason?

I heard rumours of his resignation, but they’re probably too good to be true. He’s probably one of those monkey people – the kind who won’t let go of one branch before they’re safely clinging onto another. So first he’ll find another job, and then he’ll allow himself to be forced out.

Maybe he can go back to plants, because they don’t talk back and always stand around in silent admiration.

AD TV

Full marks for perseverance, but sometimes you just have to know when the time has come to give up and let it go. AD has spent the last two decades hunting around for the miracle cure that will give it a seat in government. Now it’s electoral reform and a television station to get its message across.

Oh come on. There’s only one factor that will make people vote AD, and it’s not electoral reform or the mass media. This is the desire to vote for the party because you like their people and their message and believe they can make a difference to your life. Not enough people believe AD can make a difference in parliament, except for the dreamers with their talk of coalition this and that – and those who are cynical about it are the ones who are right. You may get angry about that if you support AD, but it doesn’t change a blind bit of anything.

Tal-pepe types who think like Lejber invidjuzi

AD’s stronghold, if you can call it that, is Sliema and Swieqi, for the same reasons that Bormla is the stronghold of the Labour Party. Why? It’s called identification. Sliema people identify with Harry, a typical Sliema boy (another one from the parocca ta’ Stella Maris). They don’t identify AT ALL with Carmel Cacopardo, and when Wenzu and Toni were AD’s figureheads, Sliema types ran a mile. I can say this with impunity because I too am from the parocca ta’ Stella Maris and lived in Sliema for the first 26 years of my life: there is a Sliema type that can be just as driven by envy, bitterness, spite and hdura as your typical Labour supporter. The only reason this type doesn’t vote Labour is because it’s too embarrassing to be associated with all those hamalli and criecer. The thinking and general attitude, however, is the same.

This is a quote from a tal-pepe Sliema lady who lives in Qui-Si-Sana, militates against the possibility of a car-park there, has decided like her fellow-thinkers and against all the evidence that it is yet another Albert Mizzi plan to take over the world, and who didn’t vote last Saturday (not even for AD) despite the efforts of the prime minister to convince her otherwise (if I were him, I wouldn’t have dragged myself to that level and would instead have given her and those who think like her a few suggestions as to what they could do with their voting document):

‘You know, the thing that really bothers me is that these people make so much money.’
Well, at least she had the guts to say it, instead of dressing up her envious resentment as concern for the environment. With certain kinds of Sliema types, making money and being successful is considered to be as much of a crime as it is in Bormla. U hallini – I’m so glad I left the town because I have as much in common with people who think like as I do with Bormlizi who vote Lejber. I am happy to be surrounded by farmers because they recognise the value of hard work, link hard work to results, are more focussed on making the most of what they have than on what others have and are not rife with spite. Hence, it is not a coincidence that with the exception of one family, everyone around here identifies with the Nationalist Party and votes for it.

Others didn’t vote because, although they are not worse off in real terms, and may actually be much better off than they were five years ago, they feel relatively worse off than their competitor, neighbour or associate, who seems to have more than they do. They vote (or don’t vote) not to gain more for themselves, but to break off what they see as the lucrative or prestigious connections of the people they envy. This is what they mean when they say ‘teaching them a lesson’. It’s not the ministers they want to teach a lesson, but the individuals who excite their envy. These are the people who talk about ‘arrogance’ all the time. By arrogance, this is what they mean – they think that some people are getting more than they are (more exposure, more money, more contracts, or more high life – who knows?).

Tajba din – they refuse to vote for Gonzi because of a car-park, and don’t mind punishing the entire country with Sant as prime minister as a consequence. L-aqwa li m’ghandhomx car-park ma’ patatthom. You don’t have to come from a sqaq in Bormla to have tunnel vision, I can tell you.

Aghmilna bye-bye, please, Arnold

As for that Arnold Cassola – well, I don’t know. What kind of opportunist uses his dual nationality to stand for election in two countries simultaneously, deciding which seat to take up and which to discard (if elected), according to which is more convenient and possibly lucrative for him?

I don’t know why people take this man seriously, instead of seeing him for what he is. Imagine if he were a politician with the Labour Party or the Nationalist Party, and did the same opportunistic thing. AD would have a lot to say about that, but it’s two weights and two measures with them. They think they can’t do any wrong, not even when their leader steadfastly refuses to fill in 37 VAT returns, despite being given the kind of special treatment that others don’t get, then still demands a presidential pardon.

And excuse me, but where is AD going to get the funds to finance a television station? Donations from contractors, maybe? Arnold Cassola’s salary? These people are totally detached from reality. They appear to have no idea what’s involved in running a television station, and more to the point, with their leader’s cavalier attitude to money, they seem not to have performed a cost-benefit analysis. The exercise would calculate the required capital expenditure and running costs and overheads, and also the expected benefits, and work out whether the costs justify the benefits.

The long goodbye

Harry Vassallo is in the newspapers again today, trying to come to terms with the end of his political career. ‘AD’s result was no shock to us. It was a surprise however, to those who imagined that even if they did not vote for AD, the party would have still somehow made it to Parliament. We were taken for granted,’ he told The Malta Independent. Oh dream on. This is just too irritating. I think what people have realised in this election, above all else, is that if you want X to be prime minister, and not Y, then you have to vote for X’s party – no fooling around with your vote. All it would have taken in this election to give us Sant as prime minister was 1,500 more navel-gazers. Thank God for all those people who flew in to Malta, voted for the PN, and left – that’s all I can say. We owe them a big one.

I think people have also realised now that a seat in parliament for AD can achieve precisely zilch, except an MP’s salary for the person who gets it and a reason for being for the organisation that backs up the person in that single seat. With one seat, you can’t legislate – and quite frankly, all this talk about ‘acting as a check on the rest of parliament’ is just so much unbelievably arrogant nonsense. Why should we expect an AD MP to police the other 64 MPs when AD can’t even police its own leader? Wenzu Mintoff had a seat in parliament as an AD MP for three whole years, and it made no difference to anything.

In Malta, the vast majority of electors (at least 90%) insist on choosing their government. That’s not a bad thing, but a good one. AD complains about it, and attributes ulterior motives or pressures, but in this AD is wrong. Choosing your government is the wisest thing to do, because you have to live with that decision for five years.