The underpoodle
This was my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, yesterday.
Joseph Muscat, taking his cue from his new/old man Edward Scicluna, who famously said in a newspaper interview that he’s with Labour because he has a natural tendency to side with the underdog, has been feeding this term into the mix himself over the last few weeks.
Aside from the fact that sympathy for the underdog does not explain Scicluna’s support for the Labour Party during the Golden Years, when it was most definitely Top Dog and no mistake about it, Muscat’s use of this word is undermined by current events and opinion polls.
The polls all put him in a clear lead over Lawrence Gonzi and put his party on track to win the general election, whether it is held imminently or on schedule.
There is nothing ‘underdog’ (or more appropriately, underpoodle) about this. The emerging underdog in this scenario is, strangely enough, the prime minister.
Despite being the boss man on paper, he is so clearly under siege by his tantrum-inclined backbenchers, so beset by obstacles put in his path by one particularly backbencher who’s eaten up by rage, jealousy and frustrated ambition, so embattled by the problems of real life in the running of a country in an economic crisis, so patient with the early hustings charades of his opposite number, that people have ended up rooting for him who were not rooting for him before.
There is a reason why Joseph Muscat would like us to believe that Labour is the electoral underdog.
When certain people think there is a real risk that Labour will lead the country, they are more inclined to vote Nationalist even if the Nationalists have been getting on their nerves and they have spent the last few months saying they are not going to vote or vote Labour/AD.
When these same people are confident that they will get a Nationalist government no matter what they do or don’t do, they are more likely to vote Labour to minimise the PN majority and ‘teach them a lesson’ (how tedious, really, and infantile to gamble in this manner with one’s future and that of the country) or not to vote at all.
This is one of the reasons for the rather spectacular Labour victory in 1996 – you know, the very one the Underpoodle wants us to forget about so that he can stick to his new theme of Labour not having won the majority of votes since 1976.
He said that on the record, to camera, conveniently overlooking Alfred Sant’s achievement and premiership, and not a single reporter took him to task for doing so, or even bothered to ask him why he did it. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue because he was working to a script.
Back in 1996, the run-up to the general election was loud with the sound of Nationalist Party politicians and activists saying that they were headed for the biggest electoral victory ever, and talk of a 20,000 vote majority. Television cameras showed us, in excruciating and triumphal detail, scenes of Eddie Fenech Adami riding on an open car through what had to be the most enormous mass meeting ever in the history of the Nationalist Party.
Confident that he would be returned to power, perverse thinkers in their thousands thought it would be a great idea to cut him and his party down to size and, thinking to discipline the PN by slimming the majority, voted Labour.
There were, of course, other significant reasons for the Labour majority, not least Sant’s irresponsible promises, which he couldn’t and didn’t keep, about the removal of value added tax. But a leading cause was the quirky reasoning of people who want, for a variety of reasons but mainly to cut the Nationalists down to size, to vote Labour and still get a Nationalist government.
The Underpoodle, having studied the situation with an intimacy he failed to devote to EU membership or the tactics of Franco Debono, has decided that between now and the general election, whenever it happens, he is going to play on our emotions by playing the part of the little, disadvantaged man who is trying to come in from the cold.
It goes without saying, for we have become accustomed to his poor strategic thinking now, that the way he is going about this is all wrong.
An underdog does not have his people talk of him as ‘practically the prime minister’ or take tours of projects in prime ministerial mode. And an underdog certainly does not speak to the press repeatedly in a stage-managed situation complete with teleprompters, podium, snazzy backdrop and a line-up of three flags.
An Underpoodle might, but that’s different.
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I remember reading an article by Joseph Muscat back in 1999 about how the NP was in crisis and early elections were imminent. Now he’s back alarming us once again about “incertezza u stabilita” this time not barking for his master Sant but for his own glory.
As an underdog, underpoodle or whatever, I think that Joseph Muscat is unwittingly helping the Nationalist campaign. In his recent speeches here and there he’s been admitting (would you believe)to some of the worst political behaviour of his party in the past. Namely, admitting the fact that the Labour Party accepting to govern in 1981 was both politically and morally wrong and that the referendum of 2003 was in fact won by the Nationalist Party.
Is he doing it so that some of his gullible followers will think that he’s the most honest leader they’ve had so far? Maybe, I put nothing beyond him, However, in my opinion it can be counterproductive.
All the Nationalists have to do when the real election campaign starts in a year or so is play clips from his speeches and the nation can hear, not from some Nationalist candidate’s voice but from Joseph Muscat’s own voice about the MLP’s ugly past.
Exactly, perfectly put, so many of my Nationalist friends who are constantly grumbling against the government and always threatening not to vote or to vote Labour, were having kittens when they realised it could become a reality and are still really worried now.
Underdog miskin, if we’re not careful he’s going to be our next Prime Minister!
I have also never understood how people are able not to vote; it is so irresponsible, I consider it my duty to vote, it is the best way to have a say in the very important decision of who will run our country, we are so lucky to live in a democratic society and to have this opportunity and some of us waste it.
Great. So now the name of the game is: Who’s the more “under” of the underdogs?
Yes, the PN has been playing this underdog game since 1998, after it learnt the lesson of 1996. From 1998 onwards, the PN’s mantra is “play the underdog”. So, in house visits, PN candidates tells Nationalist voters that “this time round” it’s going to be “really really difficult for us”, or even that “we have practically no chance this time”. Yes, because the idea is that this would rally Nationalist support. So what? Two can play at that game, stupid though it is. But this is how the PN has reduced politic
s in Malta: it’s all a game, so let’s play shall we?
Prefer the Independent pic.
Joseph Muscat is nothing but a puppet. The disconnected behaviour and pronouncements of the party members make it clear that everyone is following his own agenda and doing as he pleases in there.
Honestly, can anyone believe that Karmenu Vella, Alex Sceberras Trigona, Evarist Bartolo and Joe Debono Grech, to name but four, are going to bow their heads and follow Joseph Muscat’s lead? A pampered poodle leading a straggle of lone wolves? I don’t think so.
Let them achieve power and once again they’ll be gathering their henchmen and waging war on civilians.
The generation of twenty and thirty-somethings who vote them in are in for a taste of Labour’s golden reign. Cheers!
There’s a clear strategy.
Joseph has been reduced to mere spokesman, assisted by a couple of ‘GonziPn’ specialists whose job it is to tell us that voting Labour is anything but risky.
Then there’s the Labour network on Facebook, Super One and the party clubs.
Labour has difficulty in directing power, top down or a grassroots based Lega type system. A Karmenu Vella can have it both ways, as can Anglu Farrugia.
Joseph can’t, he’s new and without a relative power base, even because Burmarrad isn’t exactly a Labour core area. He’s overstretched and dependent on others whose interests may differ. With some, these interests don’t necessarily mean being elected to power.
We haven’t yet been told, for instance, why after the delegates gave Joseph carte blanche to decide matters, Anglu Farrugia presented his own motion of no confidence.
Luciano showed signs of impatience as soon as KMB came out against Joseph’s opinion of 1981. We all know who Luciano follows.
The latest signal of dissent is that of having to pass a constitutional vote as the opposition’s sign of goodwill, as if that would have brought the government down. Another clear cut position by the hardliners led by Anglu Farrugia, to be attenuated at all costs.
Luciano, Silvio, Anglu and Marie Louise will not remain backbenchers, not when they risk sitting behind the two Marlenes and Manuel Mallia, and perhaps Joseph himself.
Jose’ must be loving it.
Joseph probably spends his entire day rehearsing in front of a camera for his speeches, committing every expression to memory. His speeches are just a staged show for the cameras.