The cat's paw of AD
Sir Edwin Landseer. The Cat’s Paw. 1824
This comment is one of the most recent below the ‘Mob rule’ post. Antoine Vella is a champion of the succinct remark, and I think this one deserves to be showcased. A cat’s paw is person (or group) used by another as a dupe or tool. The term comes from a fable about a monkey and a cat. The monkey persuades the cat to pull chestnuts out of a fire so as to avoid burning its own paws. Versions of the story exist in many languages, and in some of them, it’s a dog not a monkey. But I think in this case, monkey fits the bill better (dogs are charming, loyal and have integrity).
Antoine Vella
The FAA became fashionable because its relevance was artificially inflated by a section of the media, for a number of reasons. I don’t remember any serious report ever issued and it has never expressed anything that was not simply an opinion. The truth is that, unwittingly or by design, FAA is the cat’s paw of AD and, by proxy, of Labour.
In the run-up to the last elections, for example, there was all that agitation about the redrawing of the development zones, a campaign that degenerated into a personal mud-slinging crusade against George Pullicino (remember the ‘vote George get Lorry’ slogan?). Then there was the campaign against the Gozo Ramla development that, again, degenerated into a personal mud-slinging crusade against the MEPA Chairman. The campaign against the St John museum also seems to be degenerating into a personal attack on Richard Cachia Caruana.
The pattern is still the same (vide the “bulldozing of Valletta” claim) but all this is mischief for its own sake: experience shows that there is hardly any lasting political gain to be made from such troublemaking. At the height of the Ramla controversy (September 2007), a MaltaToday survey put AD support at 4% in Gozo (God knows what it was in Sliema) but we all know the debacle AD suffered at the polls.
Environmental issues flare up now and again and are the cause of much heated discussion but, in the end, the outcome of elections is determined by less exciting topics like the economy, employment and quality of life.
[Daphne – The ‘Vote George, Get Lorry’ placard was famously carried by the public relations officer of AD, but that is not how she was described. She was described simply as ‘columnist Claire Bonello’. This is like saying that any protest placard carried by Kurt Farrugia, information officer (the name used to be propaganda secretary) of the Labour Party is carried by ‘journalist Kurt Farrugia’. Yes, I agree with you that the media has much to be blamed for, and the English language media in particular. Over the last few years, the English-language newspaper scene has become infested – and I use the word intentionally – with staff who are either active supporters of AD or very much predisposed to this minority grouping. The net result is AD has disproportionately large influence on the most influential sector of the media. A careful analysis of the Sunday English-language newspapers will reveal that the majority of columnists are anti-PN on principle, either because they are pro-AD or pro-Labour. I am one of the few left standing who is scathing about AD and Labour. Everyone else has been systematically axed, pushed out, or has given up.]
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Let’s say that FAA is a cat’s paw of whatever you like. So? The PN has cats’ paws all over the place: practically all of the constituted bodies, The Times, The Independent, many unions. Ok, they say that their objectives and opinions happen to tally with the PN’s. Fine. Now what’s the big deal that the MLP also has cat’s paws? Why is it being deemed to be the end of the world if an NGO happens to have objectives and positions which happen to tally with that of the MLP? Why do PN apologists think that they have some sort of divine right to always have their way? Yes, things are changing, and the PN has got to accept this.
It has only a relative majority, and if an election were to be held now, it has no chance of keeping that relative majority. This the PN strategists know very well.Change is on the march; it’s just that in Malta it happens slowly.
[Daphne – The trouble with the Labour Party and its supporters – and unfortunately, you display the same lack of insight – is that they fail to realise WHY business organisations and certain media tend to prefer the idea of a Nationalist government to a Labour government. It is not for partisan reasons, but because of Labour’s abysmal track record. Somebody who is running a business is going to vote according to what is best for the economy, and not on narrow partisan lines. And that is precisely why there are so many losers and under-achievers in AD – because they have nothing to lose. Whether the country bombs or doesn’t bomb is irrelevant to them. If the Labour Party were to suddenly and miraculously become good for business, and the Nationalist Party were suddenly and miraculously to adopt the Labour Party’s socialist attitude to business, then the situation would change. The organisations you mention as supporting the PN do not have ideological fixations and partisan interests. The FAA on the other hand, has just such fixations and partisan support for AD. If this were not the case, it would be working hand in hand with the non-political Din L-Art Helwa. But it won’t do that, because it is politically motived, and politically motived lobby groups behave in an entirely different way to non-political lobbies.]
The FAA simply represents an aspect of the Maltese character. We whinge and whine and know it all. The same problems will arise once Piano reveals his plans – regardless of whether they’ll include a parliament building or opera House. For chrissakes, even the rebuilding of the breakwater bridge is going the same way.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090213/local/breakwater-bridge-to-be-rebuilt
Out of curiosity, I’d like to know whether the FAA created a fuss when Sant declared that his party would extend the moat around Valletta.
[Daphne – Of course it didn’t create a fuss about anything Sant said. One of the prime movers in the FAA, writing in the press and petitioning left, right and centre under the false name of Helen Caruana Galizia (her real surname is Tomkins, and has been so for the last four decades at least) is one of Sant’s most besotted fans and admirers.]
I have noticed that The Times has recruited staff from the Malta Today/Illum bunch of AD/MLP loyalists. I hope that they do not adopt the amateurish/’mixing news with gossip and personal’ style of journalism.
The Times has become quite a bastion of liberal issues lately. Most of its journalists as P Shaw says have Green tendencies as well as a certain exaggerated tendency towards gay rights as can be seen in the reporting of particular stories such as the play censorship issue as well as the ‘PN is not liberal’ story.
Let me make one thing clear. Business organisations deal with governments, not parties. As a member of one organisation that our Daphne likes to besmirch so much, I will say that even the most hardened Labour businessmen in our ranks believe that they can flourish more under a PN government than under an MLP one, especially now with the new and highly irresponsible opportunistic MLP leadership.
But we are worried. A coalition made up of the FAA, with its envy-consumed agenda against any business, an AD which is, as we know, made up of a bunch of loony losers, and an MLP that is valiantly trying to build any coalition that gets it back into government, will destroy the beating heart of business in Malta. These guys don’t care how many jobs will be lost. They don’t care that their loony-left, Scargill-like blanket prohibitions against anything and anyone who tries to create added value in Malta will ultimately lead to bad things happening. They fondly believe that a government of monkeys will always be safe because we are part of the EU, that the EU will bail us out, anytime. They are wrong.
There is reason to be worried. Little harridans who have the gift of the gab and who are not afraid to take on politicians, but who are easily manipulated yet, will be with us always. There are too many people who envy the success of those who work hard for it, and will do anything to bring them down. They have nothing to lose, because they are happy to be driven by such envy. I ask you, what is the real motivation of FAA as regards the St John’s project? Why was their misinformation heard, whilst the real facts were not? This brings us up to the worrying point that the media has been taken over by people who would manipulate it for their own ends. The Times has now even recruited ex Malta Today people, with questionable agendas. The agenda is green, yes, but it’s not green as in environmental. It’s the green of good old-fashioned Maltese “hdura”.
We have journalists who are so economical with the truth and so liberal with half-truths that most of Malta has been taken in. For God’s sake, we have motoring “journalists” who try and convince us that every car they “test” is the cat’s whiskers and is perfect in every way, with no flaws. Nary a Jeremy Clarkson clone amongst them; they are guns for hire. I have no doubt that some journalists are also guns for hire, and they have no problem in destroying someone’s business just because they are paid to do so by the competition.
Are we surprised then that the FAA/AD/Labour coalition has so many weapons in its arsenal that it pulled off such a coup? They buried the truth, which is: 1. there are no longer any Great Siege heroes buried in churchyard at the back of St John’s; 2. there was going to be no chamber below the cathedral because that is structurally impossible; 3. the square in front of St John’s is not riddled with tunnels and secret passages a la Enid Blyton, because in the post-war era it was landfilled with debris from war-torn buildings; 4. excavations near St John’s will not bring that structure tumbling down. Not even the many direct bomb-hits around it, with the attendant vibrations, during the war did that.
But the fact remains that the FAA/AD/Labour coalition won a victory because the government backed down. What helped it were the dissenting voices of those who had an axe to grind against our prime minister. For all his faults, they are not even fit to polish his left shoe, let alone be his ministers. Where is their spine and moral fibre? They allied themselves with those that would have loved to destroy them, and who would do so still.
But what really did it was not these people. It was the irresponsible people who work in the media and who are so manipulative with the truth. We are at their mercy, because the media has been taken over by devotees of the FAA/AD/Labour coalition, and the professional, truthful fearless journalist of the old school is gone, to be replaced by agenda-ridden hacks with shoulders so riddled with chips that you don’t know where the journalist starts and the neo-commie ends.
It’s time someone did something about it. This blog helps. It’s read by many sane people, and much as I don’t agree with some of the views of its founder, I still think it is indispensable. But something else is needed: a new voice that speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, with no fear or favour, who says it as it is, with no shade of blue or red or green. We need good forums, debating forums, where no one is shouted down because of his or her opinion. It’s a tall order, but it’s essential in any democracy that no one’s voice is drowned out.
We don’t want rule by Astrid the Strident or by Joseph’s people’s courts, because those things are passé, gone – or they should be. But the St John’s debacle is just that. The “people”, that is Astrid, Helen, and all those others on the bandwagon, like Joseph Muscat, Ninu Zammit, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando etc, had their victory. Sanity lost.
Does anyone feel the same way?
@Mario Debono et al
My goodness! We are speaking now of FAA/AD/MLP coalitons! And that this “coalition” was so successful “that it pulled off such a coup”, and because of them “the government backed down”! Wow, seems like a government which has one third of a quota over the opposition is much weaker than I myself thought! It cannot resist a small, “amateurish” NGO! Gosh!
[Daphne – Are you being naive, Albert, or just disingenuous? To be powerful in Maltese politics you don’t necessarily need the backing of the people, as this debacle has shown us. Not that I needed showing. All you need for negative power (power which prevents and destroys) is just enough support to affect the outcome. AD nearly lost us European Union membership with its relentless campaign for votes in 2003, which would have led to the election of anti-EU Sant. And it nearly gave us Sant as prime minister last year. It did this by actively campaigning among the NIMBYs and koccuti of Sliema, the sort who live in a bubble and don’t care what happens to the country as long as their backyard is fine. A significant number of people in Sliema/Swieqi planned to vote AD in the last election. When the consequences of doing this were carefully explained to them – Sant as prime minister, not a seat for AD – some of them changed their minds and many, many others didn’t vote at all. The Eff Ay Ay feeds on these people, who can by no means claim to be representative of the rest of Malta and Gozo, but they are just enough to make a difference. Your leader Muscat knows this, which is why he is going for their vote, or at least encouraging them indirectly in their support for AD-infested organisations like AD. If he can’t get their votes for Labour, he can at least direct them to AD. Don’t forget that Sant was elected in 1996 with the votes of a whole shed-load of Sliema koccuti, many of whom I know personally. Boy, did they regret it.]
@ Mario Debono
“They fondly believe that a government of monkeys will always be safe because we are part of the EU, that the EU will bail us out, anytime. They are wrong.”
You are right on the EU. Look at Latvia and Lithuania. Business in these countries is stifled with the Russian Mafia. The economy of both countries is falling apart and what did the EU do? Nothing. The IMF had to intervene (Latvia for now, probably Lithuania next). Business is very sensitive to market disruption and negative perceptions, but after all, do the lefties care? Not at all. As Mario Debono said the lefties’ mindset is based on pure and simple envy. If I can’t have something, I must deny that pleasure to those who worked for it.
Some journalists do not hide their agendas any more. I still remember the Malta Today journalists celebrating with AD/MLP after the 2004 MEP election results.
Blogging is the way forward. President Obama invited bloggers to the White House press-room for the first time. Historic newspapers like The New York Times and the Washington Post face a dismal future. The NYT is already technically bankrupt. One of the non-financial factors which negatively affected the downturn of these papers was the not-so hidden-agenda of the editorial board and its reporters.
[Daphne – Well, really it was the sharp decline in advertising revenue, with no hope for reprieve any time soon. Newspapers no longer have the resources to ride out a bad recession. Sales of newspapers are also falling as people get more of their news and information on line. But blogging is only a complementary medium. It cannot exist in a vacuum without printed newspapers and newsrooms that have the resources to research big stories. The shame is that some newsrooms with those resources just don’t do that.]
Well Daphne how do you fund this blog then? Why don’t you use a “donation” icon? Or sponsorship banners? This could also serve to confirm the identities of your bloggers and prevent identity theft. I would be the first to donate if it meant you would use this funding for more research on this blog.
[Daphne – It’s not funded. I’m not employed, which means that my hours are my own to apportion as I deem fit. I fit it in around my work. Yes, I’ve thought of some options.]