Cleverness is good, but intelligence is better
Joseph Muscat has begun what will doubtless turn into a rather protracted campaign to convince those who voted for Lawrence Gonzi that they shouldn’t have done so. Ah, but then he wouldn’t have become party leader now, would he? The government, he tells us, has a problem with credibility. This is from the lips of somebody who has just taken Manwel Cuschieri’s brother’s seat because he didn’t have one of his own, who spent years yapping away as Alfred Sant’s poodle, and who needed to become an MEP to discover – “with hindsight”, as he put it – that “the Yes vote won the referendum”. Credibility and Joseph Muscat in the same sentence? I hardly think so.
Muscat proceeds blithely through his personal career oblivious to how he is perceived by those who do not vote for his party. As far as he is concerned, he has no credibility problem: yesterday he thought we would all be dead in our beds the day after joining the EU; today he is pro-Europe. And the only thing that changed his mind was that he got to live in Brussels and work in the European Parliament. Little old grannies and first-time-voting teenagers had drawn the right conclusion about what was best for Malta on the basis of what they read and had worked it out for themselves. But Muscat had to go to Brussels and, like Doubting Thomas, touch the wound before he believed it.
It doesn’t say much for his powers of analysis, and makes me wonder what sort of doctoral thesis he wrote. But then what am I saying? Alfred Sant wrote one too. And so did Doctor-Mario-Vella, who has about as much get-up-and-go as a mollusc with an hernia, and who is now heading Muscat’s latest commission. This commission has been asked to report back to the party leader with their findings on the political parties’ relevance in Maltese society, particularly Labour, and to make recommendations. There are at least four good people on that commission – though working with Doctor-Mario-Vella is going to make them want to rip out their hair – but I imagine that a lot of the ground they covered was sped over by Godfrey Grima in his why-Labour-lost-the-election report for Alfred Sant. Nothing’s changed since then, except for the arrival of a self-satisfied pipsqueak as party leader.
Joseph Muscat is not one to feel that his own behaviour, publicly-stated positions and non-existent electoral support weaken his claims to superior credibility. After all, a newspaper survey put his credibility higher than that of Lawrence Gonzi – which is, of course, nothing more than a sad reflection on an education system which weakens our critical faculties rather than strengthening them. Instead of sitting about with, as the vernacular has it, denbu taht il-blata, he has been strutting expansively about town, wearing a facial expression last seen on Alice’s feline friend in Wonderland, and telling any journalist who will listen that the modern age has begun and that the musty Nationalists are done for, though he is going to kill them with sympathy rather than with rage.
Now, where have we heard those words and seen that tactic before? It was in the run-up to the 1996 general election, when Alfred Sant, who had been very low-key for the previous four years, suddenly began to wear ‘cool and modern outfits’ – Joseph’s contemporary variant being the suit worn without a tie, as displayed inappropriately in parliament on his big night – and getting out and about to meet ‘smart’ people, while ramming the message home that Fenech Adami and his crew were immuffati and practised politika tal-ghanqbud. He successfully portrayed the Nationalist Party as the past and his New Labour as the future. And now Muscat is doing exactly the same, and following precisely the same pattern.
No. Not quite so precisely – there is a major difference, which is all down to the fact that Sant read marketing, not economics, at postgraduate level, even though he was sold by his party as an economist because they probably feared that Cetta down in Birgu wouldn ‘t have a clue what marketing is and ekonomista sounds much better. Muscat, on the other hand, read public policy – though even he is being sold as an ekonomista, for which read the solution to the country’s perceived economic woes. As a marketing man, Sant knows all about the dangers of peaking too early. He knows that the thing to do is to hide your light – that’s assuming you have one – under a bushel while beavering quietly away, and then, when the day of reckoning approaches, to turn that light full on. That’s what Lawrence Gonzi did. He started out as soggy as last week’s lettuce and wound up as the hero who carried the general election with his personal charisma, his image magnetised to household refrigerators.
But this man – ah, this man: peaking too early doesn’t even begin to describe what he’s doing. He’s peaking before he’s even begun. Strutting about, showing off, talking about earthquakes, promising groundbreaking changes when he knows that he’s got to deliver through a rusty, antiquated machine operated by the clueless and the bitter, making it quite evident that he thinks himself wonderful and sees no reason why we should not do so too, working out at the Westin Dragonara gym because it’s where the fashionable people go (as one friend put it, ‘Ma marx id-Duke’s Gym ma’ dawk li jivvutawlu’), eating at restaurant X and restaurant Y because he’s been told that’s where the tal-pepe crowd go for their steak. You can see what he thinks he’s doing: he wants the smart crowd, the chattering classes who brought in Sant in 1996 and then instantly regretted it, to do the same with him. He wants them to think that he’s the Labour-politician equivalent of an Alsatian who’s been snipped: easy-going, even-tempered, unlikely to bite, and with a tendency towards piling on the pounds.
Clearly, Muscat believes he is stealing a march on Lawrence Gonzi, and that this advantage will increase exponentially over the next five years. This is all very interesting, as it is the best example we have had so far – quite apart from his admission that it took hindsight to realise that the Yes vote won the referendum – of how clueless he is on the wider platform outside an organisational structure. Muscat is the classic Organisation Man. He is the kind of person who knows how to manipulate the system within an organisation for his own benefit, doing things that will bring him to the notice of those who count and those who can – wittingly or unwittingly – help him along his arc of ambition. Perhaps this is what his wife meant when she told the cameras that it doesn’t matter if we criticise her husband (gosh, Mish, thanks) but we shouldn’t try to confound his plans, because he has “foresight”. This was just a few days after he told us that he needed five years of hindsight to work out the referendum result.
You know the kind of person I mean: we’ve all known a few in our lives. At school, it was the girl or boy who made sure the teacher was watching before picking up some litter in the yard. In the workplace, it was the so-and-so who took credit for other people’s work and left just long enough after the boss to ensure that he didn’t meet him in the car-park (“I stayed so late last night…”). In the home, it’s the wife who lies around watching soap operas all day in her dressing-gown, and at 4.50pm gets dressed and stage-manages a scene of household chores. You get my drift. So Muscat got where he wanted in the party, and successfully sought the right kind of attention within the structure of the European Parliament. Out on the electoral stage, things are a little bit different, and what we are going to see over the next five years is a stand-off between cleverness and intelligence. The very few languages besides English with which I am familiar don’t differentiate between the two, but English does and with good reason. Cleverness is what it takes to work the system to your advantage, and to get thus far but no further. But intelligence is something else altogether. Joseph Muscat is clever. There’s no doubt about that. But Lawrence Gonzi, as even his enemies will admit, is not just clever. He is also intelligent – a particularly sharp intelligence that even, in the last showing, trumped Sant’s more bookish variety. Sant is highly intelligent, but far from clever. Party leaders need to be both, or they need to be aided and abetted by those who are.
Joseph Muscat has demonstrated no signs of intelligence so far, only cleverness, and there is precious little intelligence in those about him. What we have ahead of us is not so much a battle of policies but a battle of wits. Muscat is already allowing himself to be led up the garden-path, and gives no indication that he is aware of what is happening. He rushes to falsely embrace and is falsely embraced in return. He grins with simulated bonhomie, and finds that his opposite number is right there grinning back at him. He slaps senior Nationalist politicians on the back and has his own back slapped merrily in return. He announces that the prime minister has a serious credibility problem, and the prime minister smiles quietly and says nothing. He makes weak attempts at criticising government policy – he could have had a field-day with the current furore about electricity tariffs, and rightly so, but didn’t know how to go about it – and the government makes no attempt at all to criticise him in return, even though the 100-days of ceasefire are long over.
The Nationalist Party hasn’t just pulled on its kid gloves. It has stuffed them with eider-down. And there Muscat goes, strolling blithely right into it, wondering aloud why there’s a big coil of rope right there on the ground and a handwritten notice saying ‘Hang yourself.’ May the best man win, and policy be damned. Alfred Sant, an intelligent man but not a clever one, was a formidable opponent. But Joseph Muscat had better watch out, or at some point midway to the next election, he’s going to wake up to find himself metaphorically tied to a lamp-post on a public thoroughfare, naked but for a pink fluorescent bobble-hat and with a sign hanging round his neck that says ‘I’m Joseph. Fly me.’
Muscat wants to permit his people to vote against a civil right
Reno Bugeja, of whom I hope to see a lot more on the TVM screen this season, because his mode of questioning is increasingly perspicacious, asked Joseph Muscat on his big night (as he stood there with a wife dressed as though inspired by David Soul’s Silver Lady) what he thinks might have been the greatest political breakthrough of the last 10 years. And Muscat answered that it is his proposal on divorce.
Yes, you got that: his proposal on divorce, made a couple of months ago. That, in his view, is the biggest political breakthrough of the last 10 years, and hang all Malta has been through. He thinks that his proposal on divorce is even bigger than EU membership, which kind of gives the lie to his insistence that he has now grasped its full significance. It’s obvious that he hasn’t. Either that, or he’s got an ego puffed up enough to float five men in a basket right across the Atlantic.
And that just brings me back to the differentiation between cleverness and intelligence. Muscat said that divorce is a civil right. He also said that he will insist on a free vote when a divorce bill is brought before parliament. A clever man grasps only that this will make him seem modern and enlightened. An intelligent man understands that if you believe something to be a civil right, then you should not remove the party whip and free the vote, because what this amounts to is allowing your party the freedom to vote against a civil right. If divorce is not a civil right then fine, free the vote. But if you say it’s a civil right, then a free vote is out of the question, or you’re a charlatan with no understanding of civil liberties.
An intelligent man understands that the more intelligent members of the public realise this. A clever man does not, or cares only about the reactions of the less intelligent. Now back to David Soul: ‘Come on silver lady, take my word….’.
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I agree that in the beginning Sant was a formidable opponent, but in 2003 & 2008 he proved to be more and more bizarre and lost the elections practically single handedly!
I find it strange while all the maltese people are talking about the new price of electricity and water ( while the price of oil is going down) Mrs carauna galizia never had the time to comment about it.
[Daphne – Here’s my comment: Malta’s electricity is among the cheapest in Europe. We have been spoiled by subsidised rates. The current RyanAir magazine carries a feature about all the destinations to which it flies, and lists them according to what they are ‘best for’. Malta? Not best for sun or sea – but best for people ‘with long extension cables, because electricity is so cheap there.’]
It is indeed worrying that JM calls divorce a civil right and in the same breath fails to tell the party he leads to vote in favour of a civil right in parliament. What will happen to all other civil rights if he’s elected as PM? Will he tell the MLP to pick and choose the ones they like and discard the ones they don’t? Back to the future and memories of the 70s and 80s, I suppose.
Incidentally, we’re about to adopt a miniature schnauzer puppy (to be called Sammy) from a Tyrolian cousin. Guess the name of Sammy’s mother (or dam, more correctly)…..ETOILE. NO JOKE OR SLUR INTENDED. This is pure fact. Photos available – just let me know where I can mail them.
I am old enough to be Joseph`s mother. If he was my son, I would tell him not to act so arrogantly and to be careful before he opens his mouth.
He might impress a number of people, but I feel that they will soon be put off by his behaviour.
When Dr Sant increase the rate of the water and electricty Mrs galizia never informed us that our rates where the cheapest in europe. Thanks for the information even though it is ten years to late. Can u also inform us, not only about the rates of water and electricty are the cheapest in europe but what about the wages? Are they the highest in europe?
[Daphne – I never wrote about water and electricity in Sant’s time because my position then was exactly what it is now: if you buy something, you’ve got to pay for it. The argument that water and electricity are essential and so they should be subsidised makes no sense. We need a roof over our heads, food, clothes and cars, but nobody insists on having the state subsidise those things. The role of the state is to help out those who can’t do without help, and not to subsidise rates across the board so that we can carry on spending our money on other things, while the abstract ‘taxpayer’ funds the difference. There is social housing for those who need it, state education, state health care, but expecting cheap water and electricity too is just a bit too much, don’t you think? Our wages may be lower, but on those low wages, people here live a good life. I will never forget meeting a far more highly paid acquaintance in Paris for an evening some years ago. ‘Let’s meet for a drink,’ she said. And it was literally one drink. Being used to the typical Maltese night out, I told her, let’s have another. No, she said, because my budget is for one drink only. If I have an extra drink here and there I won’t be able to pay my rent, water and electricity at the end of the month.]
Your tune was certainly different when the Labour govt introduced new W/E rates in 1998 to make up for years of inefficiency and largesse at Enemalta. Compare what an average family earns in Malta to what is earned abroad and then we’ll start talking. not everyone is a millionaire here as is often implied.
[Daphne – There was no tune in 1998, Gerald. Read my comment above, to somebody else.]
Daphne:
I can really relate to the last bit. In Sweden my pay was close to double what I have now, but after taxes were gone I was still only marginally higher. Property in Sweden is still very cheap compared to here, as is consumer goods, electronics, furniture and some other nice-to-have’s, but it ends there. Electricity is shooting through the roof. Going out to eat has become a luxury (although I’m very much missing the very reasonable lunch prices offered nearly everywhere). Going to a wine-bar is for the elite only. Take your car to a mechanic and they charge you a week’s pay to open the hood and a dental check-up will cost you another week’s salary.
Saying that, I do miss the roads. There is no excuse for the sad state of the roadworks in this country, but it’s nothing I would trade away a cold drink on a nice summer evening in Malta for.
Its a pity that mrs galizia didnt inform us before the eu referendum that people in well paid jobs in the eu cannot afford to have a second drink. Were we not suppose to go into the eu so that our gdp increase to their level in couple of years? so the more our gdp increase to the european avearage, having a second drink in some far away pub is now to be considered some luxury? like when we used to go to sicily to buy mars from catania market?
[Daphne – GDP and cost of living are two separate issues. You can have high GDP and high cost of living, high GDP and relatively low cost of living, low GDP and low cost of living, low GDP and high cost of living….Judge the situation for what it is. Were we better off in 1977, 1988, 1999, 2003 than we are now? No. That’s all that need concern you. You sound young. Go ahead and make the most of EU membership instead of sitting in your shed and looking for problems. Those of us who worked to give you those chances don’t expect any thanks, which is just as well because we won’t be getting any.]
I agree with your comment but the truth of the matter is that when Alfred Sant attempted to introduce new rates for W/E bills, the whole country rose up agst him. I still remember our PM (Lawrence Gonzi) making his usual noises abt how these rates would destroy families etc etc, and I, like many people at that time was taken in by those gloom and doom predictions. Now, after 10 years of gross subsidization and inefficiency, the chickens have come home to roost.
[Daphne – Gerald, that’s because they didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, and by then he had already spent a year and a half reducing Malta to chaos with his stupid CET.]
Daphne, i do understand that Malta cannot be the Cindirella of the EU but why are we now being informed that we were subsidizing those 120 private companies/hotels for the past three years. Do you think that is fair on the consumer. We never tap their profits so why should we help their business? Don’t tell me cause they will terminate jobs or something of the note since in my opinion it is no excuse.
[Daphne – I agree with you that private business should not be subsidised by the state in return for providing jobs. That’s the old way of doing things. Incentives are one thing. Water and electricity sold at less than the cost of production are another. That said, Helga Ellul was correct to point out that we shouldn’t be paying for the inefficiencies of Enemalta, either. In a non-competitive scenario, we can’t go elsewhere for our electricity and water, so Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation have no interest in trimming overheads – except for the political considerations of re-election, which are then set off against the political cost of making people redundant or getting them to work harder, anyway. And PLEASE, it’s CindErella, not Cindirella a la Maltija. She was named for the CINDERS that she cleaned out of the grate every morning.]
This is yet another populist statement by the Tom Watson politician of our age, Austin Gatt – attempting to sow the seeds of economic hatred by blaming the 120 companies who were getting subsidized by the tens of thousands of Enemalta consumers for the situation they got themselves in now – when all of a sudden, the EU found out that capping is illegal. What next – they will have to increase taxes for us to pay off the capping amounts which have to be refunded?
The amount of rabbits pulled out of the hat to justify the Pn’s economic disasters and sheer wastefulness are unbelievable. And by the way, Tom Watson was a politician from Georgia in the 1920’s.
[Daphne – The PN’s wastefulness and economic disasters? For God’s sake, man, where are you living?]
I think we were better off in 1999. I was making close to Lm 1000 a month in those days (which was considered good money) and diesel cost 17c a litre or less. Now it costs over 51c a litre. Nowadays I’m lucky to make half that amount and add all the extra costs into the equation and you know exactly what I mean.
[Daphne – Your slashed income is not the economy’s fault, Gerald, but yours.]
Gerald – maybe you were one of those that were enjoying the benefits of the surcharge on imported items so that we could pay through our noses for locally produced one?
Maybe, just maybe.
If we had more energy providers, then although costs would
still be rising, we would have a bit of competition and
efficiency.
When I lived in the U.K. I had a brochure handed out by
the electricity supplier, which gave details of the units
per hours used by all the different appliances.
I’ve just rung Enemalta and asked if they have anything similar. “We used to but we don’t anymore.” ” Will you
be printing more?” ” No, I don’t think so.” “Don’t you think people would be interested in knowing what they
are wasting units on as costs rise, or have you the time
to tell me unit by unit appliance by appliance?”
“I don’t know them.”
This is why I hate monopolies!
I hit on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiPPWbE9BNk
Enjoy
why is it my fault? and Chris II, what exactly do you mean? I earned (and still earn) my living as a journalist/freelancer and I don’t know of any surcharge on that!
Daphne – I apologize for the mistake, did it alter the concept of my input in any way!
[Daphne – No, but CINDIRELLA drives me nuts, like ALISON WONDERLAND.]
@ Gerald Please get this into your head. In the 1996 Alfred Sant W/E price hike the price of oil was USD 15 pb, now its around USD 100. Malta has the cheapest energy prices in Europe. Not surprised your income has dropped, surely no newspaper requests your services as a concert critic. Sorry but you asked for it.
Also Helga Ellul and FOI , your companies benefit from subsidised factory rentals, tax holidays, and cheaper labour costs…what does she expect the maltese taxpayer continues to subsidise the lowest (capped) energy prices in Europe. Get serious Helga , and dont portray your company as some third rate company.
@ Gerald . Please note that the electricity prices being paid for by these 120 enterprises is less than the cost of oil, so the inefficiencies of Enemalta has nothing to do with it. In fact according to a report by PWC the inefficiencies at EneMalta only amounts to a couple of million euros and the Govt has removed these inefficiency costs in working out the real cost of electricity . So get your facts right.
Gerald – Weren’t you working as an insurance clerk for a fraction of Lm1000 per month in 1999? Or had you moved on by then?
I. M. Dingli: You say so yourself, since you used an exclamation mark at the end of your sentence.
Gerald, the bank where you were working in 1999 has expanded tremendously since it set up operations in Malta during the mid nineties. You can only blame yourself, if you no longer work at this bank / you were ‘relieved’ of your duties.(you were also reviewing concerts and Exotique CDs at the same time!!) BTW, staff at this bank was overpaid, and the salaries paid by the bank did not reflect market reality of 1999.
“Gerald Monday, 6 October 1548hrs
I think we were better off in 1999. I was making close to Lm 1000 a month in those days (which was considered good money) and diesel cost 17c a litre or less. Now it costs over 51c a litre. Nowadays I’m lucky to make half that amount and add all the extra costs into the equation and you know exactly what I mean.”
Oh dear. You better do something quick about it because , as the saying goes,” bla flus la tghannaq u lanqas tbus”, and Milky bars ARE expensive nowadays.
[Daphne – What’s with the Milky Bar? Do tell. Gerald is single, by the way, but this is not a dating agency, I’m afraid.]
Strange how much personal details are known to complete strangers! I’ll be posting my CV online next just to clear the air.
P. Shaw – I wasn’t overpaid at that time – the total income included lots of other work. I left the bank in 1997 btw.
AM – No I wasn’t an insurance clerk – that period lasted only a few months.
Any further questions?
“Any further questions?”
– was it before or after you were hosting matinee programs on super one tv for kids?
Gerald: Yes. Why do you praise KMB’s policy on private education when it was so clearly a failure?
Gerald – Rolling stone?
Sybil – The person hosting kids’ TV programs on Super One was Jason Micallef. Was Gerald really doing the same thing too?
Welcome back Corinne, how was the weather in China? I hope you are ok! —- Notice the ‘!’ and ‘?’ :)
It was a failure yes but in principle I agree with it.
Rolling stone? haven’t you ever changed jobs?
Dear Sybil and all the others here in the blog. I NEVER hosted any TV programmes on Super 1/One TV and definitely not kid’s programmes either. I don’t know from where you get these assumptions but they are totally false.
Gerald – Do you still stock up on Organza Fragrance bottles?
[Daphne – I use that, but I can assure you that he wasn’t buying them for me.]
Gerald: “It was a failure yes but in principle I agree with it.”
Which principle is that, exactly? That if someone can’t have something then no one else should have it? Or the one that says we should all be brought down, rather than up, to the same level?