Whatever happens in the Nationalist Party’s deputy leadership contest, the rest of us out here – or at least, those of us who are not enamoured of Labour – hope that all those involved will keep the common good foremost in their minds and actions. We are more than tired of public displays of egoism and the pursuit of self-centred, self-serving goals.

Politicians are forever going on about the self-sacrifice that comes with political life, how politics are about serving and not being served. It’s time we saw a bit more of that from individuals who fate, in the form of a single-seat majority, has thrown into the spotlight. The carping, sour men who have cluttered up public life for the last four years, somehow succeeding in destroying a nation’s peace of mind even as the economy chugs safely along in near-full employment and with waiting-lists as long as Republic Street for the newest iPhone, are girding their loins once more to foul up the deputy leadership election.

If ever there was an opportunity for them to pull together in a last-ditch display of unity as they – to borrow a phrase from World War I – go over the top, this is it. Please, no more bickering, no more rivalry and no more putting of personal ambition before the common cause. Yes, the pro-Dalli, pro-Labour newspapers are doing their bit in egging on resentment and rivalry with talk of ‘golden boys’ and ‘anointed successors’ and how Robert Arrigo and Franco Debono are being called up by Nationalist Party councillors who think they would make a great deputy leader (indeed), but even those with no great propensity to see the wood despite the trees should realise that now is really not the time for any such self-massaging of the ego.

Seen from the outside, they are like a bunch of ferrets fighting in a sack instead of cooperating to eat their way out of it. It’s not a good look, and beyond the aesthetics, it’s not going to get them what they want, either. If one or two of them think that it’s more desirable to be the deputy leader of a party in Opposition than a backbencher or cabinet minister for a party in government, so be it. In that case, all I can say is that I will never understand some people.

But what I do know is this: that they will never be forgiven for playing a great part in inflicting a Labour government and a Super One prime minister on this country because of their appalling inability to control themselves and their freakishly overwrought egos. It’s not about you, boys. It’s about the rest of us.

 

 

Speaking of ‘appalling’, I am one of numerous recipients of Joseph Muscat’s latest round-robin email message.  He greets us with ‘Hello’, as though he is a south-east Asian or former Soviet bloc husband-hunter on the internet, or a German pen-pal, and then goes on to tell us that he is “appalled and worried”. Not just appalled, you know, but worried too, my goodness.

And it is the state of the “energy sector” that’s keeping him awake at night, because it’s a “costly fiasco almost beyond imagination”. Gosh, I thought as I read it, just like successive Labour governments, then – though thank heavens Joseph Muscat didn’t quite pull off what would have been the most costly fiasco of all: keeping Malta out of the European Union which would have, admittedly, spared us from having him as prime minister. Life is funny that way.

“Most of us are feeling the very real pressures brought on by ever-increasing energy bills,” Muscat continues. “We just don’t need this.” You can say that again, Joseph. Who needs bills? Not me, that’s for sure. Not you, or you, or you there in the corner. None of us needs them. But they are a horrid part of life as a grown-up. You get to stay out all night if you want to, have naughty friends without having to deal with parental disapproval, listen to loud music and eat whatever you want, but you also have to pay bills and buy your own water and electricity. It’s a trade off.

I’m a little sceptical about his use of the words ‘us’ and ‘we’, though. The Labour leader is clearly not in the group of people with their backs pushed right up against the wall because of an electricity bill. After all, he has the luxury of  a wife who doesn’t work and enough water to fill his swimming-pool, which means they can all bathe in that should the Water Services Corporation cut off his supply for non-payment as it had done with Dom Mintoff. It’s kind of offensive for somebody so comfortably off to group himself with those who are truly struggling.

Muscat himself is conscious of this dilemma, because then he begins to switch curiously from the first person plural to the second person. “Our families don’t deserve to pay for yet more of the GonziPN government’s incompetence. If you work hard, and pay your taxes, to see our money squandered this way is an insult to every Maltese family.” Fascinating, isn’t it? You work hard and pay your taxes, but it’s our money that’s being squandered.

Change is not an option any more, Muscat tells me. It is now a necessity. I agree, and call me old-fashioned if you will, but I’m one of those cautious people who carefully consider, before making changes, whether they will cause a worse mess than the one I’m trying to solve. Granted that I’m not at all happy with the in-fighting, bickering, appeasement, weight-pulling and narrow parade of corrupt and malicious clowns intent on serving themselves while exacting vengeance on others, but it doesn’t follow that if I see heading my way a former Super One reporter with no policies and a gang of dinosaurs I’d rather forget then I’m going to stop him and say, “Hey, run the country, why don’t you? I’m sure you’d make a better job of it than this lot.”

Because the fact remains that everything we dislike and find off-putting about the Nationalist Party in government is right there on the surface. It is superficial. They’ve done an excellent job of running the country and the figures and the success stories are right there to show it. Mintoff rescued the working-class? You must be joking. The working-class began having it good after 1987, and in 2012 is driving around in fast cars, collecting university degrees, living in middle-class homes and with more in terms of wealth and the trappings of wealth than the despised and hated tal-pepe families could even dream of back in Mintoff’s day. Above all, the working-class is in control of its own life and not dependent on state hand-outs.

And in the current bad state Europe is in, we in Malta live in the relative luxury of jobs hunting for people, rather than people hunting for jobs. There’s a got to be a lot said for that, which makes the focus on electricity bills completely disingenuous. Let’s put it this way – which would you rather have, a cheap electricity bill and no work, or plenty of work and a bill which realistically reflects the cost of electricity production in Malta? These things are all tied into each other.

It’s a different Malta we live in now, and it’s not thanks to Labour but despite Labour. And that includes Labour’s fierce fight against EU membership, which almost sank Malta and all those who sail in her.