J'accuse: Bad Romance (They've all gone Gaga for Xmas)

This article and accompanying Bertoon were published on The Malta Independent on Sunday (20th December 2009).

The business of gifts is in full swing now as we approach the celebration of another saturnalia engulfed in the final, rushed and panicked search for presents. Have your shopping habits shifted to the net? Are you still running around from one shop to another in search of that final elusive gift that will definitely be to the liking of the receiver? Or do you, like Sheldon, subscribe to the theory that there is no such thing as giving “gifts” but rather the granting of “obligations”? Or, as he put it more concisely: “The essence of the custom is that I now have to go out and purchase for you a gift of commensurate value and representing the same perceived level of friendship as that represented by the gift you’ve given me. It’s no wonder suicide rates skyrocket this time of year.”

Well yes, Christmas is also about exchanging pleasantries and receiving those odd gifts that you will dispose of at the first opportunity. In politics it is a time of fraternal love and happiness – a welcome truce that allows the hardened men and women a deserved rest from the business of representation and government. A time in which to calmly share the spoils of the past year with party members and constituents without having to worry about anything more than who will be driving home tonight – unless of course you are a Nationalist MP.

I want your ugly

Unfortunately for the boys in blue, the last bout of Christmas boxing before parliamentarians dutifully spread out into St George’s Square to enjoy the water display resulted in an extended play with the Erskine May equivalent of extra time and penalties. At the end of the day, a bit of goalkeeping by veteran stalwart Louie Galea delayed the last minute onslaught by the team in red until Johnnie-come-lately Frankie D was (reluctantly?) rolled back into Parliament to win the last two votes of the year for the team in blue.

Insofar as Phyrric victories are concerned, this one is quite a few echelons below Heraclea, but it served to prove that the bumbling PR machinery of a factitious Nationalist Party has reached a calamitous end and no amount of face-saving antics by Dr Gonzi would serve to prevent your average man in the street from reaching his own conclusions. By the time the wounds of Franco-Gate have begun to heal, the PN’s damage-reduction marketing team should find that they have become as credible as Pinocchio on ecstasy.

It’s simple really. Nationalist MP Franco Debono was, for some inexplicable reason known only to himself and a select few, absent from a vote in Parliament. It was not just any vote but a vote on a motion to appoint chairmen to two parliamentary committees. It was not just any chairmen, since one of the chairmen being proposed was none other than Dr Debono himself. The problems began (presumably) when the nasty Labour Party suggested via a counter motion that the person to chair said committees should be Mr Speaker – also known as the man who was ousted from a seat in Parliament by the aforementioned Honourable Absentee.

The plot became thicker than a widow’s soup when, for a few moments, it seemed (to the unrealistically optimistic) that a government crisis was being precipitated. Immediately, rumours spread wilder than a bushfire as top of the speculation odds was the possibility that once again Debono was expressing his dissatisfaction at not being treated well enough by his own. Rumours crossed counter rumours and for a while the PN spin was happy enough with the idea of Franco Debono having slept through this particular debate in Valletta. Images of party aficionados being sent by (Whip) Agius and PN SecGen Borg Olivier to bang at the doors of the reluctant MP came immediately to mind.

I want your drama

It was all rather dramatic. If you had to believe the “well-informed”, those who purport to be more “with it” than the plebs, then it was all up to a faulty alarm clock or a heavy dose of somnifers. The farce unfolded superbly as the excuses from the powers that blue became more and more implausible. What was definitely impressive is how they believed that such excuses could be swallowed so easily. Meanwhile, it would later transpire that having awoken from his deep slumber and performed his representative duty, Franco Debono would turn absolutely incommunicado to all those who wished to reassure themselves that his absence was really due to an overstay in Neverland and not because of a peculiar sort of attention-grabbing tantrum. It does not take much to see that a simple press conference or press release announcing his buying of a new alarm clock would have let this particular sleeping dog (and I mean the rumour) lie.

Which is when it began to go all Pete Tong. Franco’s muteness only confirmed the worst of theories and compounded the misery for the PN machine. Within the space of 24 hours, Franco Debono went from oversleeping hibernator to greedy villain. Before you could say “Marisa Micallef All Over Again”, the spin machine went into overdrive and began an incessant bombardment on the character of what they summed up as a greedy, ungrateful upstart. Beautiful.

And in case we had any doubts whether this was really an issue of foot stamping or of mysterious quarantine-inducing illness, Dr Gonzi and wife paid a personal home visit to the Young Turk before jetting off to Copenhagen (surely to inform the assembled gentry of the new recyclable water fountain in St George’s Square). So much for the broken alarm clock theory.

They’re still at it as I type. The latest yarn being spun is ridiculously sublime. The fault, it seems, lies with the fact that Parliament is made up of egotistic professionals: “lawyers, doctors and architects” who have no idea about team playing. Worse still, some are claiming that the blame should fall squarely on the people who elected Franco Debono – they should have seen this one coming. Bang. There goes another distracting mud-slinging cannon. In election times they need your vote (don’t waste it) – now they call you stupid for voting for someone on the list they backed. Forgive me for smiling cynically in the neutral corner.

I want your everything – as long as it’s free

The truth is, you see, that we told you so. Yep. Us at J’accuse. We could see it coming. Not just myself but the many others who used the blog as a discussion forum at the time of the debate on the “Wasted Vote”. We cried foul at the idea of voting with a gun to your head. We cried foul at the system that seems to invariably favour bipartisanism for the sake of some form of virtual stability. Then the election came and went. We got a Nationalist relative majority and, while the blues carcaded happily for their victory, at the D’Hondt polls they derided the small fry for their ridiculous hopes of “coalitions”. Who wants coalitions when that could mean holding a majority to ransom? Who wants that kind of instability?

Most coalitions end up badly on point of principle. A party in the coalition fails to concede on a particular policy and the coalition falls apart. It is in the interest of all parties in the coalition to show its commitment to stable, principled governance. In most cases it will break up a coalition because it believes that staying in the coalition is not in the interests of the voters it represents. How’s that compared to a renegade MP in a relative majority that results from our system written to favour bipartisan stability? Somehow the arguments in favour of this extra fictive seat for the 49 per cent “majority” don’t sound so strong today.

My point is that coalitions may be ugly business, but most times they are forged and broken on policy issues and not internal fractions that have nothing to do with the politics of representation. As for this ridiculous shifting of blame onto the voters – if we were to accept the presumption that Debono was an unelectable character, how come he got the backing of the PN election team for the election? Once again, why is he uncomfortable now and not then? The truth is that the rules of the game during election time require the throwing of a wide net to get the valuable first preferences that determine your majority. At the point of drafting lists of candidates, the rule is simple: “Anything goes”. Screw quality assessment. Screw the duty of electing valid representatives. In any case, they were too busy bashing voters’ intent on using their vote wisely so they had no time to initiate the herd in the fine details of choosing the best candidate in their own house.

I want your revenge

Which leaves Lawrence and Co. in a tight corner. We’ll have to see how the story unfolds after the holidays. The truth is that no matter what glue, lies and smear campaigns are used to fix this business, the damage has already been done. Personally, I do not blame Franco Debono. He is an ex-colleague of mine on the law course and I have no qualms in putting my hand on my heart and saying that, were he to contest in my district, he would still not get my vote. That notwithstanding, I still do not blame Franco Debono because he is a product of our politics.

Columnists may scream and yell and tear their hair out about a man accepting his responsibilities and understanding the idea of working in a team. Others may take pleasure in pointing their finger at what they presume to be the weakness of a leader who cannot hold his team together. It’s all a load of bull in the end. The reality is much simpler to discern. The way the rules are written, we can only expect more and more of this to happen. Whether Gonzi, Dalli, Muscat or anyone else is in the driving seat, they will be getting more and more of this new breed of politicians raised on smear campaigns and short-sighted calculations for electoral success and who are less and less interested in the real business of politics.

If it’s not Dom Mintoff then it’s Franco Debono, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and a myriad others who will stand in the queue waiting to kick up a fuss and hold the workability of government to ransom unless they get what they want. It’s useless picking on the particular star of the moment – I am sure they will always find a weakness to pinpoint (arrogant, uneducated, naive – they’ll just need to take their pick) and if they won’t they will invent it, but the problem lies much closer to the surface and is much more obvious… It’s the system stupid.

You and me could write a bad romance

Poor Franco. I wish him a Happy Christmas from this column. Actually I wish all the hard working politicians a Happy Christmas. The business of representation is what it is today and you almost cannot hold it against any of them for simply following what has become routine. Admittedly, it is quite a messy state of affairs that could be improved with a bit of an effort and goodwill. Unfortunately we tend to have loads of goodwill over the Christmas period but it will be sure to fizzle out come the New Year. By that time it will be time for a new chapter in this bad romance.

… and now for the best wishes

First of all to the editor and staff at the Indy after another year working together (from a distance). Secondly, allow me a special season’s wish to the family and better half’s family who are probably in the air as they read this on their way to joining us in the freezing lands of the north. A big Christmas shower of goodwill goes to all those who I might have criticised excessively through pen, keyboard and blog (… thanks for all the material). I cannot forget the man who gives my ideas shape and form – the King of Tango – Bertu. Thank you Bertu for all the patience in trying to understand what I am on about when I describe every week’s toon (and I will try to lay off the Latin for a while).

There’s someone who has to sit out the first two hours of every weekend while I tap away at the keyboard writing this column – thanks a million to the better half for the support, she deserves a huge Christmas hug! Finally, a very merry Christmas to the regular readers who trawl through the 2,000 odd words every week. I’d offer the two of you a glass of mulled wine but that would mean hauling you over to the -12 temperatures that we are enjoying in Luxembourg.

As they say in the Duchy… Schéi Chreschtdaag! (Merry Christmas)

There will be low activity at http://www.akkuza.com during the festive season. Sporadic blogposts might be induced if snowed in.