Sorry, Kenneth, but I still think Labour is a scrap heap
Kenneth Zammit Tabona seems to think that I somehow share his feelings of frustration with the Nationalist Party and that I see things his way.
No, Kenneth, I don’t.
I have never interpreted politics from a personal, egocentric standpoint, and I don’t value or dismiss political parties according to how they value, flatter or dismiss me as an individual.
I would never dream of knocking on some politician’s door for favours and privileges, or acknowledgement of my importance and great talents, gifts, skills and merit, and then making a self-justified, self-serving fuss when I am ignored, telling everyone that I am “hurt” and am henceforth going to sulk and vote for The Others.
Nor would I ever be silly and self-deluded enough to dress up sulking as an ideological shift while pretending to be politically informed.
This is because, despite being raised in a society that is the equivalent of a village in the heel of Italy circa 1955, where villagers used their vote to punish or reward the local politicos for favours given or withheld, I am somehow unswervingly 21st-century European in outlook.
I don’t care if political parties ignore me. I don’t care if they don’t recognise my wonderful skills and gifts. I don’t give a damn if they even know I’m alive. I would never dream of asking for anything, and if I need something done, I go to the relevant department and I stand in line like a proper European.
Doesn’t that pretty much sum things up? Yes, it does.
Of course I am impatient with the Nationalist Party. I am impatient because I want it to get a grip and start going for the throat of the corrupt, shambolic, crony-infested, shady and sleazy government you have elected, Kenneth.
Yes, 36,000 people can be wrong. Millions of people can be wrong: 13.5 million people voted for Adolf Hitler in the 1932 presidential election. Many would have probably voted for him again after the war if he hadn’t killed himself and stood for election.
In our own time, Vladimir Putin has rather a lot of popular support. But gay men have rather a hard time of it in his kingdom, so I trust you are not going to say that the millions who support him are right just because there are lots of them.
And I know you’re not good with numbers so I’ll explain, with the greatest respect, that it wasn’t 36,000 people who made the shift from PN to MLP, but 18,000.
If you start from equivalent support for both parties – which is roughly what the situation was in 2008 – and you remove 18,000 people from the PN and add them to the MLP, what you have is a majority of 36,000 for the MLP. But 18,000 people have moved, not 36,000. If 36,000 people had moved, the Labour majority would have been 72,000.
I absolutely do not feel the same way you do, Kenneth. I think the Labour Party is complete rubbish. I think the people you have elected are corrupt, secretive, money-grubbing, greedy, inept, cronyism-obsessed scoundrels and knaves. Oh, and a bunch of utter hamalli, too, in the main. They must really relate to your watercolours of bourgeois Sliema homes in the post-war period and buy sufficient numbers of them to keep you in south-east Asian manservants for the next 10 years.
Your conversations with Mrs Michelle Muscat, The Spouse of the Prime Minister, must be utterly fascinating. At least be a good enough friend to teach her the correct form of address. I don’t give a hoot whether the situation embarrasses her (she’s not even aware of it), but I do quite care that it embarrasses Malta.
And thanks to your choice at the polls, we have more than enough to embarrass us already.
65 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Who is Kenneth Zammit Tabona?
I have asked around but no one really knows him. Can any one out there let us know who Kenneth Zammit Tabona is?
Kenneth Zammit Tabona is actually quite a pleasant and interesting character who really had little reason to vote MLP other than self gratification.
Unfortunately Joseph Muscat discovered that may be bought cheaper than his paintings.
bob-a-bob
While you claim that this Kenneth ZT is ‘interesting and pleasant’ the rest of your comment clearly contradicts it.
Yes indeed, Kenneth. Thank you for your fictitious wisdom and posing which has landed us with a deceitful lying and totally incompetent government.
Stop trying to justify your crass opportunism by blaming the Nationalists. It`s thanks to gullible fools like you that the country is now lawless and in freefall.
I do not think that Kenneth is a gullible fool. He is a selfish opportunist – like all only male children, the prime example of which is the prime minister himself – who practices the mantra of first me, second me, and third me. And if there is any left over, then that’s for me too.
Perhaps he thinks he should have been invited to speak at the PN Ideas Convention, alongside Godfrey Grima and Oliver Friggieri.
No. He wouldn’t mix with that crowd. Their socio-cultural identity is completely alien to him. Which is why the Nationalist Party struggles to attract Kenneth’s demographic.
Kenneth would mix with just about any crowd if it were a means to an end.
That is why the NP struggles, because its reasoning although slow, is not that.
Er, I don’t think you’ve ever been to a party convention. The only person in there with whom Kenneth could have had a conversation was Jozef.
That is to say, the only person in there who could hold a conversation with Kenneth is Jozef.
There’s a whole world out there – the creatives, the artists, the faux- and real Bohemians, the Banksys, the Angry Young Men – that the Nationalist Party still hasn’t “tapped” into. It should, but it doesn’t have a single envoy who could talk to these people.
That’s how Tony Blair and swept into power.
Is elocution holding sway over content, Baxxter?
Explain yourself.
In any case, you really should attend the next NP general conference. You’d die of massive IQ haemorrhage within two hours.
It reads like, since Zammit Tabona cannot kick himself in the shin for his terrible lack of foresight, he chose to try convince himself on Facebook.
It sounds indeed as though there was a bit of panic after this weekend and Kenneth may have been reminded as to his duties. Damage control?
It would be the “evil” Nationalists he’s on about, when that was partly his concept of attack in the first place, going back to 2008.
Is there anything in that spatafjum about Joseph Muscat and his lies?
Draw another picture, Kenneth. It comes easy to you.
And then another.
Draw one of Shiv Nair?
For posterity.
Or maybe of Sai Mizzi…to speed up the process of acquiring St John’s Sqre apartment.
Thank you to those who dropped this country right in the proverbial.
And we have to deal with the brown stuff everyday in the ministries and at the Office of the Prime Minister. Thank you, indeed. It is going to take years to reverse this almighty screw-up.
I have always admired Kenneth, but I regret to say that although people have a right to shift, the reasons for his shift are not sensible.
Kenneth seems to want a government by design. Sadly, Art and Politics don’t go together.
Bravo, Daphne.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona: another St Aloysius prodigy.
X’ghandu x’jaqsam. Do you have a chip on your shoulder about St. Aloysius?
St. Aloysius’s College and St. Edward’s College are like oil and water; they don’t mix.
And by the way, St. Edward’s has had more than its fair share of airheads and scoundrels, so lets not start down that road.
[Daphne – Three very famous prisoners, too: Noel Arrigo, Meinrad Calleja and Godfrey Ellul.]
I’d like to ask these selfish people, the Zammit Tabonas, Balzan Demajos, Gasans, Decesares of this tinpot island – under which government did you make most money?
Short memories.
This sort will tell you: they’re self-made, they started from zero, worked hard day and night and that they come from “humble origins”.
Yeah right. Tell that to the marines. I’d love to read a real account of the origins of the Gasan wealth. It might wipe the smirk off the face of a few people.
Bollocks to transparency back then!
Some started by collecting coal; there others who started by collecting scrap.
Well, the Decesares got rewarded with a new casino.
They sucked the PN dry, got their publicly-financed private beach next to the hotel, said f*ck you to the PN, and then rooted for Labour.
Let us look at it from the other side.
The PN was happy to bend over backwards for what it saw as a shining example of “gid”. It gave away public property to private oligarchs, accepted the insult because you cannot unbuild a casino, and then lost the election.
On Sunday, Simon Busuttil pronounced a phrase we hadn’t heard in a long while: the common good.
Have they seen the light?
Politically speaking Lawrence Gonzi and Simon Busuttil are as different as chalk and cheese, thankfully.
I agree. One of the best things about Simon Busuttil is that he is not tainted by corruption or cronyism.
Whether fellow party members are is another matter.
Spot on, J. Agius. These people have no principles and their only interest is to line their own pockets.
The Decesares are traditionally MLP.
Maurice Decesare, their father, was an MLP candidate in the sixties.
It wasn’t always so.
I’m speaking sixties onwards, Tabatha
That Kevin Decesare was married to the daughter of George Bonello DuPuis for a while did nothing to break that tradition.
Greed is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Two face greedy monsters. They want to make sure to keep their monopolies they built under a nationalist going.
Why selfish ? These people grasp any opportunity offered to them by anybody. so kudos and good luck to them !
I disagree. People who are financially strong should not ask for power.
I wouldn’t put Kenneth Zammit Tabona in the same league of the Balzan Demajos, Gasans and Decesares. None of those people mentioned speaks about politics and while they might fund political parties, they never pronounce themselves for or against a political party.
On the other hand Kenneth Zammit Tabona talks about his opinion on whichever media he has at his disposal.
Not quite true. Kevin Decesare openly and actively supports Labour. Front row at conferences. Introducing people to Muscat. The Gasans are a whole other ball game.
There is one name that is conspicuous by its absence.
The one that remains unmentioned and unmentionable.
The question is equally valid to him.
Though the first finances gathered would have to be the most relevant, and such people choose the backs of others as the first steps up that ladder.
I wholeheartedly approve of Simon Busuttil’s reference-by-default-inference, to him, in his speech on Sunday.
The people you mention all have very different origins, one wealthy on arrival and for the two centuries or so it has been present on the island.
The others a different kettle of fish.
My thoughts exactly, Daphne.
Prosit, Daphne, I feel exactly the same way. I do not vote for the party that is going to reward me. Kenneth doesn’t seem to understand how vulgar his reasoning is.
Next election the PN can woo Kenneth Zammit Tabona with the promise of a bigger and more luxurious free flat in the right location and a larger bevy of handsome Filipino houseboys.
Kenneth is like the winsome bride-to-be, that is looking out for the best prospect in a future husband.
St John’s Square location will do just fine.
Well said, Daphne. I feel the same way about Labour – they are a bunch of all those adjectives.
Mr. Zammit Tabona here asserts that the election was lost by the Nationalist Party. He never refers to the election as being won by the Labour Party.
He refers to his Great Leader only in one sentence and this in reference to the PN’s policies.
This goes to show that, like many others, Mr. Zammit Tabona does not believe the PL won the election because it is the right choice for the country but because the PN was not the populist government the people wanted it to be.
What he says here is that he would not have voted PL if the PN had danced to his tune and flirted with him more often.
And what that means is that Mr. Zammit Tabona does not give a fig about proper government but cares only about issues which are directly related to himself.
He didn’t vote Labour because Labour had a great roadmap but because he felt ignored by the PN government which made him deputy chairman of the Manoel Theatre and gave him lots of money to spend as artistic director of the Baroque Festival.
If only he could openly give his support to Simon Busuttil and the mindshift kicked off last Sunday.
It’s as if he’s very very angry that the Nationalist Party isn’t up to scratch.
Just like some of us then.
Is that good or bad?
Would the PN be better off if they get Kenneth’s support?
Baxxter, the problem isn’t because the PN isn’t up to scratch. The problem is that a portion of the Maltese society has lost most of its values and therefore expects a government which likewise has no values.
When Joseph Muscat used to harp about a movement, he was denouncing the socialist values and declaring himself as a modern person who’s values change according to the currency.
The PN is seen as unsure because as a party it hasn’t decided if to keep or reject it’s core values. The PN should answer one question: should it become a populist party or keep to it’s heritage and fight on against the tide?
He is very cross that the PN doesn’t recognise his genius.
BUT THEY DID! That is the point!
Who gave him his dream Baroque Festival? Who gave him a fantastically well-paid post on the Manoel Theatre management board? Who made him operatic director of the Manoel?
Who believed his bullshit about being the most qualified person in Malta for all this? It was the Nationalist administration.
That is precisely why you have to hold your nose really, really hard when voting for them.
You couldn’t put it better.
He is trying to convince himself that he did not screw things up and trying to convince others that he was justified.
Well said. Whether it is the economy, governance or moral standards, one has to be a moron not to understand that we are now much worse off than we were under Gonzi’s government.
Zammit Tabona is finding this very difficult to acknowledge, even to himself.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona is still sucking up to get that much desired government-sponsored flat in Valletta.
I rather like KZT and I don’t really care about his political beliefs(?), leanings etc. I find him amusing. But his paintings are absolute R*****H.
Daphne, please write something about the idiots who actually BUY them.
Right, latest auction, a Kenneth Zammit Tabona cats and altar boy thingy, reserved at Eur100.
No bids.
I have always admired Kenneth and will continue to do so from an artistic point of view – even though his political views don’t agree with mine.
I am inclined to believe he made a mountain out of a molehill over a couple of issues which could have been sorted amicably with the only party that has ever managed to put Malta on its feet – PN.
I would not classify his paintings as R******H. I don’t own a painting by Kenneth and would not be interested in purchasing any at this point in time as if I would it could remind me of how a person I so very much admire, disappointed me for his stance against the Nationalist Party.
I would not judge the people who buy his paintings as “idiots”. The paintings are sweet beautiful works of art painted by a very gifted artistic person.
Therefore I wouldn’t buy a painting for the reasons above and not because the paintings have something wrong.
Please, let’s get real. Kenneth Zammit Tabona is a postcard artist at best. There is nothing to admire from the artistic point of view. Just something to smile at for two seconds, as one would with a baby that’s not one’s.
The fact that he is called “gifted” says it all. Would you call Lucian Freud “gifted”?
As for the rest, Kenneth Zammit Tabona is affable enough if he fancies you (not in the sexual sense). Just don’t get on the wrong side of him.
Daphne, I know you tend to be quite lenient towards non-entities like K. Z.T. but, frankly I do not give a damn what he or other moaners like him care to do, think or write.
He is responsible for his own actions, including the harm he has brought upon so many of his compatriots.
The important thing for him seems to be that he does not disturb in the slightest way that silly ‘coff’ perennially stuck to him.
However, I had to read his piece before commenting – and agreeing with your appraisal of his penny-worth of rubbish.
He certainly needed – almost as much as that other Jackass Eddy – a lesson in elementary arithmetic.
What struck me in his prize-deserving jeremiad, however, is that bit about the ‘aristocrats and princes of blood who paid the pamphleteers to vilify the (French) King and Queen and foment the revolution’.
Is that how he sums up the French revolution and the subsequent reign of terror?
He certainly does not remember that it was also the leaders of the nearly bloodiest uprising in European history who ended up with their necks under the guillotine not very long after they had Louis and Marie Antoinette do it.
So happened to many others who presented themselves – and were ardently followed – as saviours of the trampled-upon masses. So will others in the future. Kenneth Zammit Tabona could darned well reflect upon that when he finds the time.
After doing practically zilch during his previous employment with Mid-Med/HSBC, Kenneth Zammit Tabona took early retirement as he could not stand the stress of giving a proper day’s work.
In his PN heyday as PRO at Mid Med Bank, he was used to strolling up and down Republic Street, Valletta, punctuated by frequent stops at Cordina’s.
When the bank was sold to HSBC, that was his worst nightmare, but he finally managed to get one of the earliest golden handshakes with the help of his connections. When he realised that the market for his watercolours was rapidly becoming saturated, he jumped on the Joseph! Joseph! bandwagon which provided him with a golden opportunity to bridge his way to his pension and beyond.
Kitten is no kitten at all. He knows exactly what he is doing.
Screwing up is the essence of trying new stuff….but not politics ! Politics needs strong leaders.
Prosit Daphne irrispondejtu kif jixraqlu lil dak il-patetiku.
Jghidu li l-qtates ma taghmilx sew tahsilhom.
Did Mid-Med have any of his “works” in its vaults when HSBC took over? On which side of the balance-sheet did they appear?
Is he selling his paintings by the thousands now that Labour is in power?
Well said and done, Daphne. I do agree with what you say especially when facts time and time again prove that you and I, the lesser of the breed, get to know that we are more worthy salt than any idiot of a minister.
Off the cuff I can say that you speak more sense, are up to date in information and that Mercury cannot keep up with you.
Then it transpires amply that many a contributor here are more versed and learned than some young extraterrestrial who landed in Castille by nothing else than the fabrication of fibs, dreams, wishful thinking and the modern version of Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio.