Don't keep digging, Marlene
Honestly, some people really don’t know the meaning of the expression ‘when you’re in a hole, stop digging’.
Marlene Mizzi was astonished at the level of criticism she received when she announced with pride that she voted Yes in the referendum and just a few weeks later voted for the fiercely anti-EU Alfred Sant because she wanted a change of government.
She can’t see why she is being criticised for either not believing in EU membership enough to stick to her guns, or for being a flake who can’t make her mind up.
Now here she is again, digging an even deeper hole, in an interview in Malta Today.
She says she can’t see why it is inconsistent to vote Yes to EU membership and immediately afterwards vote Yes to the rabidly anti-EU Alfred Sant.
She then makes an illogical leap from this to the ‘fact’ that she was a private citizen at the time and that nobody has the right to know how she voted. Aside from the truth that she was not a private citizen but the chairman of Sea Malta, she cannot honestly believe that she has the ‘right’ to stand for election as a member of the European Parliament without letting us know how she voted in the crucial referendum and general election that have made it possible for her to do so in the first place.
It is not about her rights, but about the right of the electorate to know who and what they are voting for. It is about respect. She can’t tell us: ‘Look here, I want you to vote for me, but don’t you dare ask me how I voted.”
The only reason a person might not want to say how they voted is because they’re embarrassed about it or they feel it might create problems for them. The vote isn’t secret because secrecy is an end in itself. It’s secret so that people don’t have to suffer the consequences, should there be the risk of any. By insisting on secrecy what you are saying is that there are consequences.
I make no bones about telling people how I vote, and I’m not asking for their vote in return, either.
But I suppose Mrs Mizzi has understood, despite her justifications, that she has reason to be embarrassed, and that explains her reluctance and her hostility.
What she is saying here is that bringing back Sant as prime minister was much more important to her than having Malta become a member of the European Union. That speaks volumes about her priorities, and even greater volumes about her failure to comprehend the full significance of EU membership for Malta.
Again, I am going to voice my irritation about people self-promoting beyond the reality of their abilities and this self-promotion being taken up unquestioningly by the media.
Marlene Mizzi describes herself and is relentlessly described by others as a businesswoman. She is not a businesswoman. The English language has a word to describe what she does for a living and it is ‘shopkeeper’. Please, somebody explain to me how one becomes a businesswoman – a term that carries with it certain connotations – by running two shops that sell stuff for babies, one of them in your mother’s house.
This is not to belittle her achievement, but I can’t stand it when a woman comes along and behaves as though she is the dog that can walk on its hind legs: it is not so much that it is done well, but that a dog is able to do it at all. Marlene Mizzi does what Edwin Vassallo does, and nobody is running around describing Edwin Vassallo as a ‘businessman’ because he’s got two shops called Best & Less in Mosta.
Is that by the by? No, it isn’t. It’s just an illustration that the true test of a person’s intelligence is not BAs, MBAs, DBAs and the rest of it. It’s the ability to think clearly. Marlene Mizzi wasn’t thinking clearly when she voted Yes to EU membership and quickly followed it with a vote for Sant. She wasn’t thinking clearly when she wrote an angry letter to justify her choices, and she especially wasn’t thinking clearly when she gave this interview and told us that because she thought that joining Europe and electing Sant were equally important for the nation, she voted the way she voted.
Oh, please. That’s cracked reasoning.
And the most cracked reasoning of all is calling yourself a businesswoman and then demanding the return of Sant as prime minister, the very man feared by perhaps 99.9 per cent of business operators because of the chaos he wreaked in just 22 months of government.
If Labour had accepted the referendum result, she said, it would have won by a landslide. Doesn’t she stop to think why that might be? It’s because thousands of people, unlike her, were consistent despite not particularly wanting the return of the Nationalists. Because they voted Yes in the referendum, they stuck to their guns and voted PN in the election. I know several Labour supporters who did that, at least one of them a former minister and another, I suspect, the current president of the republic. What was good for them should have been good enough for Mrs Mizzi, whose lack of logic defies belief.
Here she claims that “whoever attacks people for exercising their right to vote is indirectly attacking the right to vote in itself…..Voting is an expression of a political opinion, and to question that right is also to undermine freedom of expression”.
She cannot distinguish between the right to vote and the way one uses that right. Nobody is saying anything about her right to vote. Of course she has that right, and she can use it as she pleases. But then we have the right to laugh at how she voted, and to criticise her for inconsistency. She has the right to make a fool of herself, and we have the right to joke about it, and in her fury it is she who fails to understand what freedom of expression is all about: the right to laugh at someone who is asking for our vote while getting all hot under the collar when we ask her how she voted. And then to laugh even harder when she tells us.
This is from Malta Today:
By publicly admitting to having voted Yes in the referendum, and then voting Labour in the general election, (Marlene Mizzi) has up to a point opened herself to criticism of inconsistency. After all, Labour under Alfred Sant was vehemently opposed to EU membership, so a vote for one would automatically cancel out her vote for the other. How does she counter this criticism? And what sense does it make to vote in favour of something one moment, and then – barely three months later – vote for a party which offers the very opposite?
“Where’s the inconsistency?” she instantly replies. “Bear in mind at the time I was a private citizen, not a public figure, and really and truly how I voted is my own affair. In any case, I used my vote to get what I felt was best for my country. Five years ago, I wanted Malta to join the EU, but I also wanted a change of government.”
But aren’t the two things mutually exclusive, considering the ferocity of Labour’s anti-Europe campaign at the time? Not according to Marlene Mizzi, who reasons that both these objectives – joining Europe and electing Labour – were equally important for the nation at the time. But she also acknowledges that the PL mishandled the issue back then, particularly in its reaction to the referendum result.
“They mistook the strategy, no doubt about that,” she concedes. “If the Labour Party had accepted the referendum result, it would have won the election by a landslide.”……………
.……….But for Marlene Mizzi there is an altogether more sinister angle to the current criticism of how she voted five years ago. “Whoever attacks people for exercising their right to vote is indirectly attacking the right to vote in itself,” she asserts. “Voting is an expression of a political opinion, and to question that right is also to undermine freedom of expression.”
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Playing both ends against the middle: yes to EU, so she can attract the moderates, yes to Sant so she can attract the diehards. Expediency, nothing more. To be expected? Perhaps.
Spot on!
Pezza wahda. and make no bones about it, she is the epitome of a champagne socialist, with loads of ”lanzit” to go with it. And we all know why…………
[Daphne – Like that other champagne socialist featured in First magazine today: interviewed in her antique-furniture-stuffed Qrendi tower with massive swimming-pool and wondering what to acquire next. A child of Margaret Thatcher if ever there was one….]
L-aqwa li missiera kien “manual worker”, hux …
U Farrugia kif ma deherx fir-ritratti? Forsi biex tkun tista tibqa teqred kontra d-divorzju u favur il-Madonna?
Yes, and someone should teach her how to lay a table.
“Whoever attacks people for exercising their right to vote is indirectly attacking the right to vote in itself,” she asserts. “Voting is an expression of a political opinion, and to question that right is also to undermine freedom of expression.”
This cracked me up. What a load of horse shit.
I’ve changed my mind, I prefer Eco-button blunders to “I’m paid to vote but I forgot how to”
Then again we have only her word for it that she voted “yes” in the referendum. Had she really done so – assuming that she is at least a wee bit intelligent – she would have at least abstained from voting in the following general election had she not wanted to vote PN.
Why don’t you call for the banishment of all political parties, we’ll elevate Gonzi to president. We will then have a utopia!
Go for it!
[Daphne – Che centra? I imagine you failed to read my column today. Come to terms with it, Edward. AD has hit the wall.]
Oh sure! Had GA become leader of the Labour Party you would have turned red. Pull the other, ma’am.
As for AD, let the electorate decide…if you believe that they have hit a wall wake up to the fact that your party is currently buried under the rubble.
[Daphne – Edward, I understand that you are consumed by frustration, but simmer down a little. George Abela as leader of the Labour Party would not have drawn me to support Labour, but it would have damped down or eradicated much of the anxiety that people like me – but not people like you – feel at the prospect of a Labour government. Because we don’t live in a world of make-belief, most of us know that a Labour government is inevitable at some point, so we would like it to be led and managed by somebody sensible. As for AD – dream on. You don’t even have to look at the polls to know what’s going to happen, and quite frankly, the party isn’t even a party anymore, is it? My party is buried under the rubble – which party would that be? I don’t have one. Arnold Cassola, Lawrence Gonzi, Joseph Muscat, Josie Muscat and Norman Lowell do. I only support one.]
… Dr John Zammit has one too, a small one, but one nonetheless.
First Magazine (issued by the same TMIS) is promoting Marlene Mizzi in its last issue before the EP elections
What do you expect – Marie Benoit is back from her holidays and she is the executive editor of “First” magazine.
God, how they deserve each other those two. Actually. looking at their photos, I think there’s a resemblance. Are they related?
Marlene Mizzi is worse than being inconsistent – she is a blatant liar. Oh come on, it’s so obvious she did not vote Labour in 2003. One moment she is saying the Labour Party (Alfred Sant) mishandled the result of the referendum, and a few weeks later she claims to have voted for him to be prime minister.
If she was in a court of law, the judge would throw her in for perjury.
[Daphne – The thing is, with the vote you can claim what you please and there is no proof either way. I actually believe her, because it would have made much more sense to claim she voted PN. That wouldn’t have exposed her to accusations of cracked thinking, which have done her far more damage than any claim to have voted PN would have done. Her market isn’t among in-nies ta’ Bormla but among pro-EU up-and-coming types, who wouldn’t have minded her voting PN in 2003 because they did so, but who sure as hell mind the fact that she voted for Sant and to keep us out of Europe. I’m one of them. I think it’s unforgiveable: I’m all right Jack and screw the rest of you.]
As for her ‘lanzit’, it all boils down to her showdown with Austin Gatt over the (failed) Sea Malta privatisation. She just wanted to be a primadonna and got herself into one big mess. Privatisation is the prerogative of the shareholder (ie the government) , and not of the chairman.
She should stick to what she knows best – selling nappies.
[Daphne – My point exactly. She was promoted way beyond her abilities. I remember remarking at the time – privately – that it’s a rum old world if you can go straight from selling baby-clothes out of a shop in your mother’s Rabat front room to running Sea Malta. Tokenism at its worst, and it works against women in the end.]
David, I have to agree with you for once. It’s obvious she voted PN and is now trying her damnedest to convince her electorate otherwise. She was wrong about Sea Malta. But your last comment takes the cake, and is unfair.
[Daphne – Actually, it isn’t, and I had to delete the last part of your comment because you shouldn’t reveal a person’s identity when that person has not chosen to reveal it himself. There is the world of difference between operating a large import and distribution company and running two shops that retail toys and baby-clothes. The know-how acquired in the former can be applied to other businesses. The know-how acquired in running two shops can only be applied in running another shop, not even a whole chain of them because that takes things to a whole new level. And that’s why Marlene Mizzi fell flat on her face so dramatically when it came to challenging the owner of the company for which she worked about the future of the company. She didn’t even know that when you challenge your employer about the future of the company, it’s you who gets shown the door and obviously not your employer. And she wasn’t even shown the door – I suspect more to avoid political fall-out than because of her management attributes. Instead, she stormed off in a huff.]
Well, Daphne, I am sorry, but I beg to disagree on this one. One does not preclude the other. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t vote for her. But she had stints in other things besides her clothing business. BOV for one. Insurance for another. Plus she does have a degree in economics and management.
[Daphne – I know nobody who runs a successful business on the back of a degree in economics and management, except for a couple of individuals whose success is all down to their inherent business skills and the degree was incidental. Please enlighten me. On the other hand, I do know a prime minister who tried. As for BOV and Millennium Insurance, don’t get me started.]
I think she was not the right person for Sea Malta but in all fairness she didn’t do a bad job there. She just fell foul of Austin Gatt, and she had no right to contest the government’s decision to sell off the company.
As for not revealing identities, you know how I feel about the matter. I’m rather contemptuous about nom-de-plumes, because it gives you the luxury to say what you feel without facing the consequences. I put it into a par with “tfesfis fil-widnejn”. I do risk bothering everyone in this blog, but this is one guy who will not hide.
[Daphne – Good thing too, because it would have to be a big cupboard.]
I wrote bucket….and yes, to my eternal shame, if it was a cupboard it would need to be quite large. My weight issues are a work in progres I’m afraid.
My point is that if Marlene Mizzi started a business, and it’s not a bad business ( considering the huge amounts one has to spend to clothe babies and buy them toys, something that I am doing at the moment) then she has some degree of inherent business skills.
[Daphne – Again, I beg to differ. Starting a shop at a time when people would buy anything at any price was easy-peasy. That’s why so many people did it. And that’s why they are now faltering in the face of competition. Opening a baby-goods shop back then when there was nothing and importation was just beginning? A child could have done it. The trick was to work out whether it was sustainable or not. If anyone can do it, then before long, anyone will be doing it and you’re fighting your ever-tightening corner.]
A businessman is not born that way, but becomes so, after making countless mistakes and trying not once, but many times. But degrees do help make those skills learned better.
[Daphne – I disagree. Being good at business, like many other things, depends on innate aptitude. Training and experience build on that but they cannot create it where it does not exist – just as no number of music lessons will turn me into Mozart. Or even into Renato. Philip Green started out as a barrow-boy on Portobello Road, and not as a Harvard graduate in economics.]
In Europe, it’s considered shameful to have a business and fail. In the USA, its considered an honour, because you tried doing something different if not innovative.
[Daphne – I don’t think there’s any shame attached. It’s just more difficult to get back up on your feet after bankruptcy. And we’re not discussing failure here. We’re discussing mediocrity, which is completely different.]
Edward! You are green but really green in logic and anything to do with applied politics. At least you may want to look around you beyond our shores to see that the green movement is getting nowhere despite its roller coaster alliances. In EU parliament last improvement was in 99 as a result of one of these alliances. That produced a negative payback in 2004. Spirit may be fine but fundamentalism and inconsistency no.
[Daphne – Edward has emigrated to England to live and work there, thanks to his EU passport, which he only has due to the efforts of the former prime minister and political party he despises. Unless, of course, he has convinced himself that we joined the EU thanks to Harry Vassallo.]