In a bid to throw mud at the Labour Party, knowing full well that it has been consistently leading at the polls since 2003 – a lead now so perilously close to the next general election – the Nationalist Party is painstakingly trying to portray the opposition as one hell bent to denigrate, personally, former chief at the National Statistics Office, Gordon Cordina, for revisions made to GDP statistics.
The revisions made strangely transformed the economic scenario of the country within a couple of weeks, with depressed statistics unexpectedly showing a marked general improvement. To do so, earlier statistics that used to indicate a satisfactory economic performance, on which the Nationalist Party had based its electoral platform for the 2003 general election, got suddenly depressed.
The PN and, on the frontline, Lawrence Gonzi, were already expressing confidence about the “upturn” in the economy weeks before the NSO came out with the revised statistics. The usual choir of constituted bodies – who, you will remember, posed for a photo at Castille with the former Prime Minister announcing the oncoming “new spring” instead of the utilities surcharge – jumped onto the Nationalist bandwagon to complain about the Labour media’s character assassination strategy of Dr Cordina.
If there is a political party in Malta that has concentrated its politics on so much mud-slinging in its history there is no competitor to the Nationalist Party. For personal attacks it is in a class of its own. History is replete with examples.
Former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami was condemned by a Court of Law to pay libel damages to Malta Labour Party leader Alfred Sant for slandering him live on national television, barely 48 hours before the 2003 general elections, with the accusation that Dr Sant had denied his son the opportunity to join the law course in 1985. It was a lie that must have cost the Labour leader much of his personal credibility. No apology was ever made.
In the run-up to the 1996 general elections the Nationalist Party flashed posters of Dr Alfred Sant all over the islands, catching his eyes in disparaging style while describing him as a person who cannot be trusted – “Ma Tistax Tafdah”.
Sometime in the middle of Dr Alfred Sant’s short tenure as Prime Minister his private marital relationship was splashed over the headlines of some sections of the print media with opinion formers clinically selecting parts of his annulment judgement and gleefully linking them to his political performance.
Again, while Dr Sant was Prime Minister, a story had been published about Dr Sant’s involvement in a traffic accident right after a dinner at Dingli, maliciously implying that he had been drunk.
Net TV cameramen to this very day continuously take snap shops of Dr Sant’s attire focusing on anything he is wearing that might not necessarily be in place at that moment in time. Needless to mention, a leading cartoonist of Nationalist repute continuously depicts Dr Sant’s face as lonesome and introverted.
There are many other examples of Nationalist warmth towards personal respect and dignity but I would need a longer column to mention them all. When you see how the Nationalist Party is picking on the Labour Party for exercising its constitutional right to freedom of expression in criticising Dr Cordina’s findings, you will be tempted to think that the Nationalist Party is made up of angels, saints and martyrs.
I hope that this contribution has helped to dispel the myth.
Dr Gavin Gulia is opposition spokesman for Home Affairs