Bondiplus yesterday
How does Lou Bondi put up with an idiot like Toni Abela, and more to the point, why does he invite him onto the show when he has no valid contribution to make to the discussion? Perhaps it’s for comic relief. The trouble is that he’s not funny, only irritating in that Catholic-Institute-comedy-let’s-make-farting-jokes way.
Anna Mallia should be given more and more airtime in the current scenario because she speaks clearly and sensibly on the issue of what the Labour Party must do to get its house in order. Some of the men, like Jason Micallef (perhaps that should be ‘men’) become all hysterical, as they do when faced with a woman who talks straight and doesn’t flirt or bat her eyelashes to soften the blow of her words (tell me about it), but she’s really good value television-wise, and the perfect foil to stupid circus acts like Toni Abela.
George Abela
The interview clip with George Abela gave a very good account of the man. I tend to warm to people who have what I call ‘amused eyes’ because the light of amusement is usually the light of great intelligence. Intelligence without humour or human insight is not enough, as we have notoriously observed over the last 16 years in both the MLP and AD leadership. I also tend to look favourably on people who give measured and precise replies to questions which they grasp in a split-second. It’s another sign of a sharp and focussed mind. Give me this kind of intelligence, rather than the ‘intellectual’ sort, any day of the week.
George Abela and Lawrence Gonzi are practically clones of each other, which is why Abela has been almost unanimously identified, outside the Labour Party at least, as the obvious leader to take the Labour Party (finally) into the modern age. The two were in the same year at university, studied together, share very similar values and remain great friends. Both of them put the missus top of the list of their priorities, which wins the respect of women who are accustomed to come third, fourth or last after work and hobbies.
Their fond respect for each other is something that will make the contest between them ‘more interesting’, Abela said. It will certainly be hugely more reassuring to the rest of us to see the Labour Party with a normal, socially secure and well-balanced leader who is not hostile to any particular sector of society or business, for a change. It will also mean that 2013 will be the first campaign in recent decades in which the leaders of the political parties are neither demonised nor vilified.
George Abela has always been pro-EU membership
Abela’s signal advantage is that he was and remains pro-EU, and almost certainly voted Yes in the referendum, perhaps even consolidating that vote by giving his number-one preference to the Nationalist Party in the general election that followed. Many other pro-EU Labourites did. His signal disadvantage is that he doesn’t have a seat in parliament. But as he explained to Bondi, the party leader doesn’t need to have a seat, at least not at the beginning. His primary duty would be to restructure the party from the bottom up, reform it, bring it in line with what is now required, build up morale, restore trust, and make it a party with a natural majority.
Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici didn’t have a parliamentary seat, either, when he was made Labour leader, and that’s why we called him Dr Zero. The MP Paul Xuereb was made to give up his seat to him, and was later rewarded with the acting presidency, though never the presidency. If George Abela is made leader, then to my mind the solution seems obvious, even though it will require a bloodbath: Alfred Sant gives up his seat to him when he begins collecting his pension in 11 months’ time. That will serve the double purpose of removing his inconvenient presence and locating a seat for the new leader.
But the moment might have come and gone already
Ah, but here’s the thing. I have this nagging feeling that George Abela’s moment has come and gone. That moment was in 1998, when Alfred Sant made such a hash of government, called an election after 22 months, and lost it. It retrospect, it now seems obvious that Sant should have been forced out at that point and replaced with the pro-EU membership and generally trusted and universally liked George Abela. That way, the 2003 general election would have been a straight contest between Abela’s pro-EU party and Fenech Adami’s pro-EU party, and there’s no guessing who would have won. Now I can’t help thinking that this particular boat has been well and truly missed.
Ten years ago, we were all saying ‘George Abela, he’s the man.’ Ten years later on, we’re still saying it, though life and times have moved on and none of us is getting any younger – including George Abela. Yes, he is the man with the moral authority, the backbone and the sense and sensibility to bring Labour into line with contemporary thinking and behaviour. But we can’t escape the fact that this means he will be fighting his first general election as party leader at the age of 60 – the same age that Sant is now. Yes, Gonzi will be 60 too, but it won’t be his first electoral contest as party leader, and he will have nine years as prime minister under his belt.
Should age be a factor? Reluctantly, I must conclude that it is. We cannot underestimate Lawrence Gonzi’s supreme feat in appealing to first-time voters when he is even older than their fathers are. It is a truly amazing achievement that he managed to win their affection by taking on the role of the favourite fun uncle who is at once an authority figure but not an authority figure, who is an honorary young person who takes their side against the strict, boring and difficult parent (Sant). Gonzi will find it much harder to do this with the next crop of new voters, and Abela will find it even harder still. Also, I can’t help thinking that it is not ideal for the next general election to be a straight face-off between two men on the cusp of collecting their pension, however valid they might be. There is no doubt that one of the factors that worked against Sant in this election was the perception that he was cut off from today’s reality, and from what makes young people tick in particular. This is ironic, given that he used to his advantage his relative ‘youth’ in his first fight against Fenech Adami in 1996.
Ideally, the new Labour leader should be around 45, and must definitely have been pro-EU membership from day one. This is a tall order, and I can’t see the party filling it. More tragic consequences lie ahead for Labour, and for the rest of the country because of this.
Alfred Mifsud
As the main guest on Bondiplus, Alfred Mifsud announced that he will not enter the leadership race. He said what many others believe: that Labour lost this election between 1 and 15 May 2003 – the first date being when Sant rose from the dead and threw his hat into the leadership electoral ring, and the second date being the day he was elected (surprise!). I would go even further back than that, and say that it was lost in the early and mid-1980s, years for which no apology has ever been made, even though Tony Blair has apologised for Britain’s involvement in slavery and the Pope has apologised for myriad wrong-doings committed by the Catholic Church. The still-festering wound left by those years begins to bleed again at every general election, preventing great swathes of people from even contemplating a vote for Labour. I am one of them.
Lino Spiteri says that without Sant, Labour would have won by 7,000 votes
No fan of Alfred Sant and, or so word has it, one of those who abstained in this election (not that it’s any of our business) – Lino Spiteri said on BondiPlus that Labour’s campaign was too negative and aggressive, and that this put off the middle ground. I’m so glad that somebody noticed. The silly chatterers with their inane newspaper columns were so busy remarking on how ‘negative’ the Nationalist Party’s supremely positive campaign was that they failed to focus their eyes on the other side.
Lino Spiteri graciously said that he didn’t wish to speak too strongly about Alfred Sant now that he has gone. It’s a view that I have heard elsewhere, and with which I don’t agree. Alfred Sant may have resigned, but he is still a fact of political life, and we should be discussing his legacy and the damage he caused to the party, instead of sweeping him conveniently under the carpet. But anyway – different folks, different strokes, and Spiteri couldn’t restrain himself from saying what most of us think: that Sant played a major part in his party’s defeat. Had Sant not been leader, he said, Labour would have won by 7,000 votes. ‘Sant has several good qualities, but he didn’t have what it takes,’ Spiteri said. ‘The losing team should move aside in its entirety.’
The losing team. I love that. It’s the flipside of 1996’s winning team.
The working classes are having fewer children
Then Spiteri couldn’t restrain himself even more. Look, can you blame him? I think he was pretty circumspect, all things considered. ‘Labour must edge towards the middle class,’ he said. ‘It can’t cease to be the workers’ party, but it can’t be just a workers’ party.’ Well, of course – the demographics are against it if it stays a workers’ party. When the Labour Party was at its strongest, the working-class was the dominant demographic. Increasing affluence causes it to shrink with every passing year – and so does the fact that people from a working-class background now tend to have one or at most two children – not just for financial reasons, but also as a reaction to the crowded families they grew up in. Meanwhile, the affluent middle classes are having more children. It used to be the other way round, but no longer. Labour’s market is shrinking, while the Nationalist Party’s market continues to grow.
Even a bahnan would know that
Lino Spiteri almost snapped when he spoke about Sant’s proposal for halving the surcharge no matter how high the price of oil goes. ‘You can’t promise things like that,’ he said. ‘Even a bahnan would have understood that a promise like this can’t be kept because it’s impossible.’
Perhaps – but there must have been plenty of bahnani at Labour’s mass meetings, because when Claudette Baldacchino quizzed them for Super One TV about what they love about Labour’s proposals, they all seemed to mention the sircarg and VAT on education (when they probably all send their children to state schools where the education is free of charge).
No, Labour didn’t lose by a whisker
I felt like applauding Spiteri when he said what I have been trying to get through to people for the last week or so: the Labour Party did not lose by a whisker, but by a mile, and it is unfair of Labour’s present and erstwhile leaders to keep pretending that they did. In this effort they are joined by the simultaneously crowing and grieving Alternattiva Demokratika. The same sentiment is echoed by pro-Labour and pro-AD commentators. It is deceiving and misleading.
Labour didn’t gain any votes since 2003. It gained a relatively small percentage of the first-time vote which replaced the votes of those who died since then – but it might not even have recaptured the votes of those who were Labour supporters but who voted PN in 2003 because they favoured EU membership.
As Lino Spiteri pointed out, the Nationalist Party won despite the fact that thousands of ‘PN voters’ stayed home, didn’t even collect their voting document, or went into the polling-booth and scribbled over the ‘blue’ section of the ballot-paper. ‘If all those had been persuaded to vote PN after all,’ he pointed out, ‘it would have been a tkaxkira.’ But their essential loyalty to the PN was still there, because they didn’t vote Labour or AD. In other words, they wanted Gonzi as prime minister without helping him to get there, and instead of shifting to the other parties, they simply abstained.
Some smart remarks from the show
This blog’s top star Jason Micallef was quoted as saying that Sant couldn’t be blamed for defeat because his public performances were faultless. To which Anna Mallia replied: ‘What do you expect Jason to say? Jason is a party employee. He can’t speak against his employer.’
Toni Abela said that ‘the media’ and journalists are biased against the Labour Party and that the Nationalist Party is well networked. To which Bondi replied; ‘Can you drop the siege mentality? There’s nothing preventing you from building your own network. And you have your own radio station, television station and newspapers, too.’ Then Anna Mallia put in: ‘Yes, we have to stop playing the victim, and accusing others of picking on us. For example, if Lou invites me here on this show, I’m not going to come along and speak against him.’ That was a botta for the fact that Toni Abela had just passed a whole series of sarcastic remarks about Lou and his support of the Nationalist Party, just as Evarist Bartolo had done on the last show prior to the general election.
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You see, Daphne? They DO have a persecution complex and Anna Mallia has brought it out last night; and if I remember correctly, during ‘Xarabank’, I believe she said another telling phrase. Something to the effect that ‘Xi nies urew wicchom’ fil-‘meetings’ laburisti’. Almost like they consider it an act of ‘lese majeste’ if they are counted among such gatherings, and thereby committing themselves.
I notice it also at the stationer’s. The people who buy the ‘Torca’ automatically fold it with the banner on the inside as soon as they are handed the paper; as if they are ashamed of showing to all and sundry their political persuasion.
I hope you are wrong about George Abela ‘missing the boat’. He projected rather well during Bondi+.
I agree he may have missed the boat but Maybe he can put things in order.
I just had a scary thought – If labour win in 2013 they may put Sant as President!!
We already had Barbara as proof of the awful people they can choose.
Just a small point… the plural of bahnan is bhahan, not bahnani. :)
Otherwise spot on!
I think that I should point out the fact, that many of the ‘bahnani’ (Vanessa is right in writing the true plural as bhahan) mentioned above, have children who frequent schools including the Junior College and the University of Malta, where they are asked to buy very expensive books which include VAT!
Aha, the Conservatives have discovered a new heroine. Anna Mallia, one of Malta’s foremost eurosceptics. A KMB acolyte. Yet, since she hits out at Alfred Sant, she “should be given more and more airtime in the current scenario because she speaks clearly and sensibly on the issue of what the Labour Party must do to get its house in order.” Oh yes. The Conservatives will feel very comfortable when the eurosceptics like Mallia start giving advice to Labour! Very convenient.
You know, this website is getting to be useful as it is permitting those of us not mesmerised by this government to take a good look at what really is behind the GonziPN facade of the Maltese Conversatives. Something tells me this site wont last for long.
We are observing carefully. Very, very interesting I have to say.
[Moderator – How did you come to the conclusion that a blog which is in favour of divorce legislation is run by Maltese Conservatives?]
M. Cutajar, as somebody who sells and buys books, I know exactly what the VAT on them is: a piddling 5%. In other words, even if you spend EUR100 on books, the VAT is a mere EUR5 – hardly worth changing the government for.
Albert Farrugia – my newspaper column has lasted for 18 years so far. There is no reason why my blog shouldn’t do the same. If it doesn’t last, then that’s only because I couldn’t be bothered to keep it up – but as long as it provides entertainment and information for people, then I will keep it up – as a public service, seeing that there is no money to be made from it and considerable time and expense involved in keeping it going.
Your definition of political conservatism is quite perplexing. You are clearly equating the Maltese Nationalist Party to the British Conservative Party, and the Maltese Labour Party to the British Labour Party, when it’s the other way round.
‘Conservative’ is a strange way to describe the fervently pro-EU and pro-socio-economic progress Nationalist Party. It is, however, a very apt description of the politics of our Labour Party.
Albert Farrugia – Who are the “we” you refer to? Victor Laiviera and Victor’s Nephew? (His capital ‘n’, not mine)
So…there is VAT on education and not as the PM stated over and over again that there is no VAT on things related to education!! And may I let you know that having more than one child one spends more than a mere 100 euros throughout their school years. The last book one of my daughters bought cost Lm 30(69,88 euros) and that’s only ONE book.
M Cutajar – There is NO VAT on education; when AS ‘waqa ghan nejk’ by stating that there was VAT on, for example, new (private) schools (duh!!) he then used his mega spin machine to get him out of the hole he had dug himself and we were inundated by hour after hour of footage showing VAT on stationery, uniforms etc.
Go on – work out the VAT on education related (not education) purchases for a whole year – 3 kids and all. I doubt we are talking more than €50 maybe €100. If peace of mind, growing economy, jobs and integrity as a nation are worth less than €100 to you then you probably voted Labour.
Just as the sercarj was so flawed as a concept so too was the “VAT on education” – meant only to help AS retain credibility – amongst Labourites!
As Lino Spiteri declared the sercarj was unworkable – even a bahnan could see that! Now decide who are more credible – AS and his non-thinking followers or LS and the half of the nation that voted in yet another PN Govt.
Wake up – unless you do, you are doomed to stay in opposition for a long long time. The discussion happening right now in relation to the lijderxipp is sad in that it is about the micro issues, the personalities and the power factions. As Nationalists we see it as a no-brainer in terms of who the next MLP lijder should be but the MLP seem intent on retaining the status quo – good luck to you but don’t be surprised next time you lose an election!!
@M Cutajar: “The last book one of my daughters bought cost Lm 30(69,88 euros) and that’s only ONE book.”
Well, then, you spent the grand total of EUR3.30 on VAT. You could have got a nice capuccino and a couple of pastizzi down at the Sliema Ferries for that amount of money.
Amanda, I don’t recall using a capital N… if I did it was a one off and I have passed my English O-Level 15 years ago. On a blog you should focus on the issues not on whether someone declared his name or made a grammatical/spelling mistake. We are not writing a book/article but expressing opinions.
Mod, enjoy your camping. At the rate were going, it might be your last.
Grow up.
So Robert A, would’nt a family with 3 kids with a modest income welcome another 100 euros (or more) after one scholastic year is over? I’m sure they would. But perhaps you think that everybody thinks the way you do………
As to halving the surcharge – well nearly half the people of Malta wanted that too and they also wanted 3 or 4 days added to their vacation leave, etc. I would have welcomed them for sure. All this would still have left us with ‘peace of mind, growing economy, jobs and integrity as a nation’. Why not? But it sure seems that you opted otherwise. Enjoy!!
Well, Daphne, a capuccino and a couple of pastizzi at the Ferries could be a rare treat for some people!
M Cutajar – Your knowledge of economics is rather weak if you think that, even as oil prices continue to shoot up, a surcharge can be halved with no one else picking up the rest of the bill and that extra holidays can be lavished on employees at no cost to anyone at all.
To paraphrase the infamous words of one Dr Alfred Sant “dawn il-mizuri kemm kienu ser jiswew u min fejn kien ser igib il-flus”?
It’s alright for sanctimonious Sant to have promised those things to the gullible. He wasn’t going to pay for them himself, was he? He misled you dreadfully there, didn’t he? And aren’t you lucky you’ve been saved the nasty shock of having him bumbling along as PM, ‘growing’ the economy by magic tricks and generally messing around with people’s lives – mine AND yours.
M Cutajar: What price good governance, eh? Just a capuccino and two pastizzi.
I don’t know who you are or what you do for a living, but for your employer’s sake I hope you’re not the organisation’s finance manager.
M Cutajar – you just don’t get it do you? Whether you pay VAT on books or surcharge on electricity the Government still needs to collect its revenue to pay its bills. If AS got elected and halved the surcharge he would – as a minimum – have had to increase VAT by around 4 percent – I can assure you that 4% of your total expenditure is a lot more than €100!
Mintoff was the master magician – taking your money from behind your back (tax) and giving a little back to you in your face (Childrens’ Allowance). AS’s surcharge ploy was no different; thing is he would have collected a lot more – from YOU – than he would return to you! By definition you are gullible and fall within Lino Spiteri’s definition of a ‘bahnan’ – to quote “Anke bahnan kien jaf li ma tistax tahdem (halving the surcharge)”.
You are prepared to sell your children’s future for €100! You would have voted against EU membership – believing the great intellectual (!) – AS – for he does not believe in the EU and cynically tried to impose his belief on the whole nation. He would probably have soured relations with the EU – just to make his point! Unless you are totally myopic you would concede that EU membership and latterly Eurozone membership are critical to increasing our standard of living and quality of life. Regaining four public holidays and €100 pales in comparison.
There was a time when I could not afford pastizzi and cappuccino at the Ferries because I was out of work – between 1997 and 1998; a period that will go down in history as one of the bleakest economic periods.
At least you get to buy the book. I lost my opportunity to go to University thanks to the MLP. Thankfully your kids still have that opportunity and you know what? I am really proud that my vote will go some way to affording your children the same opportunities as my children have.
Corinne, the capuccino and a couple of pastizzi were Daphne’s idea actually not mine! And as for the surcharge being halved, well let’s just hope that the 5 energy savers promised to us would help our country’s economy growth!
[Moderator – Will the cappuccino come with a biscuit? We need to know if we are to have no regrets about ordering it. Anyway, history is for the historians and cappuccinos are for Adrian Mole. M, the point is that only in Lilliput is an election hinged on the gift of a cappuccino, and only in the mind of madmen is oil subsided up to infinity, taking inflation with it.]
Well Robert it seems that many are quoting the ‘bahnan’ part that L. Spiteri mentioned on Bondi+. It seems that there are a great deal of bhahan in Malta – 141,888 persons!!