Oh, the pig’s tail has gone

There’s a saying in Maltese: you can’t change a pig into another creature by cutting off its tail. Trimming its ears won’t turn it into a bull terrier, and reducing its rations for a week while chasing it round the farmyard won’t turn it into a candidate for the Aga Khan’s stables.

But that’s what Joseph Muscat is doing. He’s cutting off the pig’s tail. He’s changing its name, changing its emblem, reforming its structures but, guess what? He’s not changing the people and he’s not changing their mentality.

If he weren’t quite so full of himself, so smug and self-satisfied, at this point I would begin to sympathise, even to feel sorry for him. I like people who go for it, people who try, who make change and get things done. But when their efforts turn Quixotic and they fail to realise they’re doomed, or when they are sadly inadequate to start with, then I just tap my temple with the forefinger of my right hand.

Joseph Muscat is too busy changing the Labour Party’s name and its emblem to realise that what contributes most to the party’s negative image is its front-runners, particularly those two clowns who are his deputies, its spiteful, inane, crass, humourless and ill-conceived media, and its woeful website Maltastar.com, with its pidgin English and its ‘pueblo chico, infierno grande’ – small town, big hell – outlook on life and politics. All of these are so inadequate that the Labour Party might as well put up a neon sign saying ‘We have really low standards, and because they’re so low, we don’t even notice.’

Take this hilarious description of Joseph Muscat’s most recent pronouncement, on the website that he set up (which is probably why it’s so shabby). “The Labour leader called for quality to become part of our genetic make-up”. I wonder how they think that might happen – genetic engineering, perhaps. Other countries have GM foods. We’ll have GM people. The funniest bit, of course, is that the person calling for quality to be engineered into our genetic make-up falls so sadly short of the mark himself, as do his two deputies, and the very party website which reported his speech.

STUDENTS CHURNED INTO BUTTER

Lynne Truss, who wrote a book called Eats, Shoots and Leaves about the ludicrous implications of poor grammar, would have lots of fun with Maltastar.com. After telling us how we are at risk of being devoured by (man-eating?) utility bills (they amended that sentence after I laughed out loud on my blog), they are now telling us that young people must be turned into butter. If Malta is to survive, Maltastar.com claims, the country must “churn more students”.

With a delicious absence of irony, Maltastar.com reported its leader’s call for Malta to improve its grasp of foreign languages, including English (and let’s leave aside the fact that in Malta, English is an official language, not a foreign one). “The overall level of English is on a decline. Fresh impetus needs to be placed on harnessing a good command of the English language across the board.” Lie down and weep.

As if that were not enough for one day, Maltastar.com also gave us its own particular take on Joseph Muscat’s solutions for our tourism future: “An integral part of Labour’s proposition is the environment and particularly the Mediterranean lifestyle.” I suppose if Maltastar.com and Il-Partit Laburista were to have their way, we would be attracting droves of tourists by herding goats while wearing bikinis (the beach lifestyle) and faldettas (heritage) while chomping on bigilla and naqa hibz. If anyone wants the Mediterranean lifestyle, they’ll be flocking to Greece, not Malta, especially after the mammoth international success of the film Mamma Mia. You can’t have a Mediterranean lifestyle without beaches, which is the first thing non-Mediterranean people think of in word association games (Mediterranean/beach).

BIG TALK AND VAINGLORY

This mixture of shocking ineptitude and narcissistic vainglory would be delightful were it not for the fact that this isn’t a circus act or a comedy show we’re looking at, but what is very likely to be the next government. Here’s Joseph Muscat again, as reported by his website project: “In the coming years” – I feel I should tell them that the correct cliché is ‘in the years to come’, and that the ‘coming years’ means they are coming right now as we speak, which clearly they are not – “Labour will serve as a catalyst as well as a positive force that will seek to encourage the reforms required for our country to position ourselves amongst the leading economic players of Europe”. Ghastly construction, I agree, but they’re obviously translating literally from Maltese, English being a foreign language, as Joseph Muscat and Maltastar.com reminded us in their call for quality to become part of our genetic make-up.

What is more interesting than any sad attempt by the Labour Party to use English to attract the puliti, when the puliti are logging on only to laugh, is the resurgence within the party of big talk, which in more informal circles might be described as bull’s excrement. Here we go: “Joseph Muscat said that he is a firm believer that given the right strategy, Malta stands to become the Best in Europe.” Maltastar.com obviously thinks that whatever the best in Europe might be, it is certainly a proper noun.

So we’re going to become l-ahjar fl-Ewropa. That’s interesting: the best at what? Spelling mistakes? Grammatical errors? Non sequiturs? The genetically re-engineered ability to think with that part of the body usually contained by the seat of one’s pants?

This is just the beginning. There’s going to be lots more big talk, you’ll see. I know, because I remember the big talk of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The more hopeless the situation became within the Labour Party (and in the country, given that Labour was governing), the more big talk we got. The budget was a Rainbow Budget. Malta kienet l-ewwel u qabel kollox. We didn’t need Europe because we had fought off the Turks 500 years ago. We were better than any foreigners. We didn’t need foreigners. We didn’t need education because we were good enough to get by without it. We didn’t need doctors. We didn’t need courts of law because the people’s courts could decide on matters of justice. We didn’t need a free press because a free press never put bigilla on the table. Maltese women were the most chaste and home-loving in the world. Maltese men were the best workers (and the most masculine in their boots and overalls, hence the Msida monument).

How exhausting. And now, apparently, because with five years of hindsight and four of them as an MEP Muscat has realised that we do need Europe after all, instead of jerking ourselves out of the EU to prove a point, we are going to become the best – or rather, the Best – in Europe. We are going to eclipse Germany, Sweden and Denmark. We are going to tell our former colonial masters where to shove their status. We are going to wipe France off the map and stuff its foie gras and its Citroens down its throat. Italy will cease to be the food capital of the world. Malta is going to be the Best.

And we are going to be the Best with Joseph Muscat, Anglu Farrugia and Toni Abela at the helm, with Joe Debono Grech and Alex Sceberras Trigona bringing up the rear, and with GlAnn BAdingfield in ‘Brussel’. The born-again Partit Laburista is currently in conference, deliberating hard even as you read this. The conference is called Progressivi, on the principle that a thing is miraculously transformed if you change its name, like that pig minus its tail.

Former police inspector Anglu Farrugia addressed the conference. “The Nationalist government is like a rightist regime,” he said, having probably also been born again himself and with a memory that starts in May 1987. The Labour Party is progressive, he continued, and that is why it is renewing itself. Hmmmm. Snakes shed their skin, too. Deer and moose drop their antlers and grow new ones once a year. Dogs moult. That doesn’t make them progressive.

To undermine his efforts at convincing us, while deluding himself that he was underlining his point, Farrugia stood on that podium with the word ‘Progressivi’ emblazoned on it and repeated his claim that the Nationalist Party “stole the election” (from whom?) by buying votes. He says he has documentation to prove it – some VAT receipts, perhaps – and that the progressive Partit Laburista is ready to publish this. Why don’t they publish it, then? It’s not as though they don’t have a television station, a radio station, the fabulous Maltastar.com, and a newspaper.

As if that were not enough clowning about for one conference, Toni Abela was next up on that Progressivi podium. Having recovered from the creative stress of composing a letter in Maltese from Barack Obama to Joseph Muscat and reading it out at a public meeting, he revived the Labour Party’s penchant for the Biblical-style use of metaphor, parable and simile, the preferred mode of communication of leaders in a sub-literate society.

The Partit Laburista, he said, is like a ship entering the Malta Dry Docks for renovation and about to begin its voyage, with the Auberge de Castille as its final destination. Maybe I should have said ‘mixed metaphors’, given that Toni’s ship can sail up Girolamo Cassar Avenue or scale the bastion from Grand Harbour below. That’s one hell of a smart ship. They should stick a pig’s tail on it and call it the leader of the Labour Party. Then they might get somewhere.