Will the people running the country just stop bleating on about ‘positive politics’ and ‘being positive’ and ‘positive thinking’? They’re in government, not running a programme for recovering addicts. And quite frankly, all this ‘positive’ talk makes them sound spaced out themselves. Any moment now and they’ll be bringing out the crystals to swing across our foreheads and telling us about our chakras.

From the people in government, what we want and need is action, not positive talk and positive thought. Problems are problems, and they’re as real as whatever you’re holding to read this column. No amount of positive thought or talk is going to wish them away, change them or turn them into fun. Worse still, talking about being positive in a scenario where real people are facing real challenges and hellish difficulties is tantamount to an Asperger’s Syndrome level of insensitivity and lack of social awareness or emotive ability.

Let’s say somebody is a ball of distress and tension because she’s got a spouse or son who’s gone diving and not returned, and the Armed Forces are out looking for him. You’ve got to be as thick as a brick to say to that woman, “Come on, be positive. Don’t be so negative here.” Anybody who says that to her deserves all that’s coming to him.

 

Thick as a brick is about right. I’ve always associated the ‘be positive’, jolly-hockey-sticks outlook on life with a certain degree of dullness of wit. At school, I couldn’t help but notice that the jolliest girls always failed their exams. It’s a good thing they had a positive outlook on life because they ruddy well needed it. The course of life after school didn’t do much to shape my opinion differently. It was as though the fairy godmother parcelling out gifts said to herself, “I can’t make this one smart, so I’ll make her/him happy instead so that she/he won’t be bothered.” The worst thing about the relentlessly jolly and positive is that they seem never to notice when their jolly positivity is inappropriate and generating feelings of extreme negativity (generally towards them) in others.

People who have some degree of intelligence are aware of just how many things can go wrong, in how many ways, and how very badly, with all the attendant consequences and the consequences of those consequences. Intelligence is linked to insight, and insight gives you the ability to assess risks – and, more pertinently, to line them up for assessment. Positivity, and this may sound like a contradiction in terms but it isn’t, affects a person’s judgement negatively. When assessing a situation and preparing for it, it’s not the things that can go right that you’ve got to be looking at, but the things that can go wrong.

In any case, the bottom line is that the government’s boringly repetitive line on positivity now has the ring of ridicule about it. Every time the Opposition says something – the very sort of thing it should say, as the Opposition – there’s a press release from the desk of Kurt Farrugia telling us how negative the Nationalist Party is and how it has learned nothing. I think it’s the Labour Party that has a great deal of learning to do. The first lesson is that what works in Opposition really doesn’t work in government, and that includes buzz-words and ‘positive talk’. You need a different set of tools there, chaps.

The latest such spiel came a couple of days ago, when the Opposition declined the government’s invitation to take part in its so-called Action Committee for Economic Growth. And damn right they were, because it’s the government’s business and responsibility to take action for economic growth. If they can’t manage that and need some crutches in the form of the people who were doing the job pretty nicely until February – well, then, what can I say?

The Opposition basically said thank you, but no thank you, and that it prefers to do its constitutional job as the Opposition rather than serving as a consultant to the government. But the Office of the Prime Minister released a statement saying that the “Nationalist Party has closed the door on a golden opportunity to start a new chapter of joint action for the country’s economic development”. Honestly, what...well, never mind, but if this lot of so-and-sos really wanted to start a new chapter on joint action for Malta’s economic development, they had ample opportunity to do so in the last 25 years, and they didn’t.

Any economic development in this country took place with the Labour Party kicking, screaming and biting all the way to the finish line. When it comes to the prime minister himself, his idea of joint action for economic development was to wage a five-year campaign against EU membership and then top it all by telling us to vote No in the referendum so that Malta would stay ‘sovereign’. And what was their vote against the Budget last December, which created havoc in government systems? Is that their idea of joint action for economic development – or would that be their cunning plan of using the same budget after their No vote had been used to bring down their rivals?

Sixteen years of wrecking the economy while in government, followed by 26 years of waging war on every economic initiative while in Opposition, interrupted by 22 months of more economy-wrecking while in government – and now, because they’re in government again and don’t want to carry the can for any economic wreckage that takes place, Labour suddenly want “joint action for economic development”. And anyone who tells them where to stuff it, however politely, is carped at by one of Snow White’s people for being negative.

“The government regrets that the Opposition appears intent on continuing its negative attitude even when it is offered the hand of friendship,” the Office of the Prime Minister’s statement said, continuing that the government’s “positive attitude” seeks to involve everyone for economic growth, in line with the ‘stil modern’ of modern democracies.

Sickening, right? I mean, if you want lessons on contemporary democracy you really have to take them from the Malta Labour Party, don’t you. And it might have taken a couple of decades, but they’ve decided that positive thinking and positive talking works a hell of a lot better than setting fire to newspaper buildings and shooting at people who don’t share their views.

For small mercies let us be grateful, even though this particular political party knows no middle way. If it’s not ransacking our homes and clubs, sacking the law courts or puncturing our walls with bullets, it’s boring the pants off us with chakra-chatter.

What was that I said earlier about recovering addicts? Lots of them go straight from drink and violence to religion. That puts the pseudo-Buddhist talk in its proper perspective. So let them go ahead and talk positive. At least we know we won’t be finding any dead bodies under a bridge while they’re doing it.

 

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