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(Picture) Il-Partit tal-Mickey Mouse: Marlene Business Forum shows us what fine stuff Labour is really made of.
The Times, Monday, 5th April 2010
LABOUR IS OUT OF ITS CLOSET
Austin Gatt
Through gritted teeth, Joseph Muscat smiled as he listened to Renzo Piano present ideas for a new Parliament House last June.
What he saw was so self-evidently attractive that he could not bring himself to say he did not like it and he spent the next nine months avoiding the subject of the City Gate project.
His party’s statement on the day said that Labour was “positive” about the project and acknowledged that “everyone will have their own preferences and it is impossible for everyone to agree”, implying that someone will have to decide even though a controversy is sadly inevitable.
Dr Muscat was sharing the same hymn book with Astrid Vella. On TV she told a reporter her organisation “absolutely agreed” with Mr Piano’s idea for two separate projects: one for a Parliament and the other for a performance space at City Gate.
The controversy, deemed inevitable by Labour, predictably followed. The debate on whether to rebuild Barry or do something else altogether with the site at the entrance to Valletta is anything but new.
In the public record there are 46 proposals before Piano’s on what to do with the site. The one thing they have in common is that, for some reason or other, they were all found to be controversial and ultimately abandoned. In confront-ation with each of these proposals was the nostalgic alternative, preferable for some, to rebuild an opera house on the site, cancelling history and rebuilding the site on Barry’s plans; making the new look old and the old forgotten.
In March 1955, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff had one thing to say to the Barry nostalgics: “Don’t think I don’t like culture” – he needed to point that out – “but that site is simply too small for a theatre to be economically sustainable.” For once he got it right!
Still, those who wished for an opera house had the right to make their wishes and views known. They were not entirely coherent about their views. Some wanted Barry back, some did not really care as long as it looked like La Fenice on the inside. Some wanted a full-scale opera house (that would have needed six Valletta blocks to build) and some would have been happy with another Mediterranean Conference Centre hall that sounded better. But incoherence is a forgivable characteristic of positions knocked out of petitions and protests. And the wish for a full-scale professional theatre is no less understandable for that.
The argument became unfortunate when, perhaps in anger, perhaps to compensate for incoherence, the plans to build a new Parliament House were presented as an elitist obstruction to a populist project of building a theatre “for the people”.
It would have been a little less surprising if this argument had been made by some 30,000 petitioners asking for the money to be diverted to cover the Ta’ Qali stadium grandstand with an all-round enclosure. But this schizophrenic socialism was frankly a little bit rich, considering its source.
In any case, this rhetoric of “the people”, however misplaced, proved too tempting for Labour. Dr Muscat and his predecessors often had to compensate for appearing uncouth and insensitive to art. Their put-on machismo of preferring a burger in Sicily to a black tie state occasion was and is a natural extension of that boiler suit hero iconography they live on.
Like the French revolutionary who saw the crowd run past him, Dr Muscat perceived the glitterati’s protests and thought “I have to chase that crowd so I can lead them”. Ms Vella chased the leader chasing the crowd.
Falling over himself to appear bourgeois, Dr Muscat forgot to even keep the pretence of demo-cratic instinct.
After nine months of careful neutrality, he now declared himself against the building of a Parliament House. Not because he would rather have an opera house (where burgers are unlikely intermission features), nor because he can think of a better use for the money: he cannot.
Dr Muscat is against Parliament House because hostility to our democracy poisons the blood-stream of his party. This is why he argues that a “majority” is against this national project.
This is why he counter-intuitively pretends to shed tears over a theatre he would never visit when his real frustration is to witness the erection of the first Parliament House in the 90-year history of our democracy, which his party would have preferred to have been much shorter.
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Komplu bil-kitba taghkom uru lin-nies – specjalment lil-votanti – kemm tal-PL huma ilkoll bla sustanza u li kull ma jghidhu u jghamlu huwa biex jissodisfaw il-kilba li ghandhom ghal-poter, izda minghajr ma ghandhom ebda hjiel ta’ kif ser imexxu jekk Alla hares qatt isibu ruhom fil-gvern – ghax imbaghad zgur nigu koppi.
The argument Astrid Vella keeps avoiding is: a new Parliament building will release the Palace to be the real centre of Valletta, which it really ought to be but has not been precisely because it housed Parliament.
I had not read this article by Minister Austin Gatt. Good that it is reproduced here. But, contrary to what is being said, this article betrays not the PL’s, but the PN’s true nature.
Here we have a government minister accusing the legitimate opposition in a democratic state, which polled just one third of a quota less than the government party, of being “hostile to democracy”. And why? Just because this opposition party declared it to be against building a House of Parliament at City Gate.
Hostile to democracy? If Malta were a western democracy, such an accusation by a government minister would have caused an outcry. And he would not have lasted long in his position.
But this is Nationalist Malta. Ruled by people who expect a permanent hold on power because they consider themselves the saviours of the country.
The Nationalists´ behaviour in Malta today reminds me of the Soviets´ behaviour when the Easter European people sometimes revolted against their dominance. The Soviets´ used to ask those people to remember that it was they who saved them from Nazism. And that without them Europe would descend again into Nazism.
Comparing the Nationalists to the Soviets is a bit rich coming from someone who has taken umbrage at the claim that Labour is hostile to democracy.
It’s almost as rich as the grouch from County Antrim calling Malta a dictatorship.
Dan jaf x`inhu jghid?
Albert Farrugia has the gall to teach us the meaning of democracy when we lived through the hell of 1971-1987. He must be another blinkered Labour coconut.
He claims that if you were to accuse someone of being ‘hostile to democracy’ in a Western country then you would be summarily relieved of your position. Give over Albert and grow up.
The whole point of Dr Gatt’s contribution is that Joseph Muscat never uttered a word against the project for nine months until he thought there was some political mileage to be gained. He then opened his cake hole for the sole purpose of stealing a few votes. Now trot along and go to maltastar.com.
Absolutely nothing new from Joseph Muscat and his party.
Austin, please just get on with the project and make sure it is ready by early 2013.
Good article Dr. Gatt, once again you managed to hit the nail on the head. Our country needs people like you,who get the job done. You make me proud that I’m a Nationalist and prouder that I’m Maltese.
Well done Daphne – you hit the the proverbial nail on the head – they so love Disney characters and spend most of their time living on cloud number 9.
Labour’s attitude is stifling real innovation. I’m wary of their 25-year plan, if this is their attitude towards modernisation.
Can somebody tell me how much programming does One TV devote to encouraging viewers to take courses, to specialise and gain meaningful skills?
They are supposed to be the blue-collar party, but they are doing a disservice to this demographic, succumbing instead to redneck politicking.
Instead of lifting the lower classes up they’re again dragging the middle classes down. I know social classes are not in vogue any more and that is really to the detriment of the most vulnerable. The worst society can do is ignore them and act as if they don’t exist.
I think there could possibly be yet another – perhaps more mundane – reason why the LP doesn’t want the Piano project to materialise. It knows that once major embellishment projects are carried out, people usually like the outcome and relish their vastly improved surroundings.
Only last week people flocked in droves to Tigne Point and one need only mention various embellishment projects which have come to fruition such as the Valletta Waterfront, St. George`s Square, Merchants Street and St. John`s Square, the Cottonera Waterfront, the Park at Ta` Qali, Manoel Island and the various projects being carried out by the local councils. [Needless to say all the above projects met with much criticism and even opposition.]
Actually, this is the sort of change which Malta badly needs – and is getting – with the PN in government. Malta is gradually but tangibly being transformed and modernised in no uncertain manner. Unlike the zdingar and issikar tac-cintorin fi zmien you know who.
Hilary, you are absolutely right. Once the project is completed, it will give a new sense to the Valletta entrance and I am sure people will love it and the Maltese will be proud with the realisation of a Piano project in Malta. Remember the “state of the art” hospital, for instance?
Labour knows that if they do not oppose it now, come 2013, once the project is ready, a majority of the electorate will have a very favourable mood about the Piano project.
Labour continues to accuse the current government of mediocrity, but it is they who are mediocre. They keep repeating their past mistakes. Like when Alfred Sant, in 1992, said that the PN government had the mandate to join the EU, but later, in 1996, found it politically opportune to change his mind. In the short term he won, but in the longer term, he lost.
Ilna sejrin b’dan id-dibattitu ghal aktar min 50 sena. Issa fl-ahhar sibna gvern li ddiecieda. Issa daqsekk paroli zejda u fil-vojt, inxammru u nibdew nahdmu sabiex illestu fit-timeframe li tana l-gvern. Importanti li l-gvern jara li t- targets tieghu qed jintlehqu u mhux intawlu x-xoghol tal-progett b’xi sentejn ohra. Kuragg mela, ghalina.
Partit tal-Mickey Mouse bil-provi. Disa xhur ilu kienu jimxu fuq saqajhom u illum jippruvaw jimxu fuq rashom. Sbieh dawn il-laburisti.
Is the hat that Marlene’s wearing part of the golden handshake that Austin Gatt gave her for f**king up Sea Malta?
Her hat sports the new PL logo, selected after a ‘referendum’ among Labour supporters.
Just because LP is against the Piano project, I am 100 per cent in favour – once the matter has been ridiculously reduced to the political football-pitch, by those who think that they can squeeze some more votes for the 2013 elections
I wonder who reduced the Piano project to a ‘political football match’?
There were many elections in the last 60 years and none was lost because of the disappearing War Damage funds, the abandonment of the opera house ruins and the many proposals which were shelved.
Elections are won/lost based on government’s performances and the perceived better proposals of a waiting opposition. Thus far the Labour Party has not proven that they even have a vision, let alone a sensible plan and therefore it would not be much of a surprise if the sane majority opt for yet another Nationalist government in 2013, irrespective of whether the Piano project is finished on time.
All the trips to France, Libya and China and taking in what must be breathtaking views, will not help Joseph one iota unless he smartens up, removes his silly grin and starts offering sensible solutions to Malta’s problems which by 2013 will even be less pressing than today’s.
Labour’s past record is not stellar and reviving old characters of the 70s and 80s will not help polishing its image.