Future leaders should think before they speak (or write)

Here’s a little something from the man who fancies himself prime minister:

The Chinese campaign on Tibet has taken an interesting development. The Chinese are now adopting a media campaign to neutralise another media campaign. In blogs, chat-rooms, bulletin boards and by SMS, Chinese citizens are assaulting the international press, exposing mistakes and depicting what they perceive as foreign manipulation.

One hopes that the matter will not lie to rest once the Olympic Games are over.

– Joseph Muscat, The Times (last Monday, 31 March)

I’m sure he didn’t mean it quite that way, in which case his thinking and language skills need some work. Or maybe he did mean it that way, because I don’t think I’m imagining things when I pick up more than a hint of admiration in his description of the way “the Chinese” (what, in general?) have “adopted a media campaign to neutralise another media campaign”. He seems wide-eyed in wonder at the smart way they are “assaulting the international press”, picking on errors and revealing “manipulation”. Please don’t tell me that Reno Calleja of the China-Malta Friendship Society, once known as Il-Kolonna tal-Partit Laburista, is another of this
silly man’s mentors.

And then Muscat says he “hopes that the matter will not lie to rest (sic) once the Olympic Games are over”. I’m trying to work out which side the self-satisfied future prime minister of Malta is on in this moral battle: China or Tibet? Because it certainly doesn’t seem from this piece of writing that he’s with the people of Tibet on this one.

Perhaps he admires “the Chinese” in their assault on foreign interference in blogs and Internet chat-rooms because he wishes the Labour Party had had the presence of mind to do the same in this last general election. Yes, I’d wondered about that myself – though of course, it’s useful to have some arguments to hand when you’re assaulting people in cyberspace, and all the Labour exponents seemed to have was paranoia and hysteria.

One of the more prominent members of the party, Maria l-Maws who has put himself forward for the leadership, has taught communications at the university for years. He teaches communications at undergraduate level, and yet he had no input into his party’s communication with the public. Is it because he wasn’t wanted? Maybe – but from interviews he has been giving to the press, I gather it’s more likely because he couldn’t understand what was required. Perhaps he should have asked some students
before the event rather than afterwards.

The newspaper articles Evarist Bartolo wrote before the election were full of confidence that Labour would win because the people he met on his house-calls were so fed-up. That’s what they told him, and he believed them. He made the mental leap from their irritation with the government to their vote for Alfred Sant, with whom they were probably even more irritated but too polite to say so. That Harry Vassallo made exactly the same mistake. On the basis of what people told him on house visits, he thought he would get four seats in parliament. Oh dear.

Only now is Maria l-Maws saying what should have been done to communicate with people. Well, it’s a tad too late for that – water under the bridge, as the Irrevocably Resigned leader likes to say.

Meanwhile, the smug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug future prime minister of Malta is busy admiring “the Chinese” for their internet assault on those who support the people of Tibet. Typical.

“One hopes that the matter will not lie to rest (sic) once the Olympic Games are over.” What does he mean? That “the Chinese” will continue to invade internet chat-rooms and blogs and take their oppression of Tibet into cyberspace? And what do the Olympic Games have to do with Tibet? The matter was being discussed before and it will continue to be discussed afterwards.

Chinese soldiers shooting Tibetan pilgrims, Mount Everest, October 2006