Much play is made of the fact that there could be various factions within the Labour Party. The Nationalist media make much spin of this, particularly when they are short of “saleable” news on the domestic front.

What is intriguing is that, at the same time, various sections of the local media resort to a sense of omertá when it comes to commenting or speculating about the various groupings within the Nationalist Party. In fact some of them seem to be far more

interested in promoting and

furthering a Lawrence Gonzi image-building exercise.

From the information I have, there are at least four groupings worthy of note.

• Those who support Lawrence Gonzi blindly.

• Those who are merely toeing the line for their personal survival while covertly yearning for a different leadership.

• Those who did not support Gonzi in the leadership race and who might not think twice about criticising the Gonzi style of government openly and publicly.

• Those who supported Gonzi during the leadership campaign but who feel left in the lurch after having been possibly given to understand that they would soon reap the benefits of their “unbending support”.

I also know of other Nationalists who respect Gonzi personally but who feel disillusioned by the way the Joe Saliba group seems to be running the party. Things seem to have deteriorated on this front, particularly since the PN’s disastrously- handled local elections campaign. Disillusion among such people is running so deep that they are even losing interest in the party as a whole. Others are even reported to have given up their prospective candidature for the elections.

Another emerging grouping belongs to those Gonzi loyalists who risk alienating themselves, should he bring back former Minister John Dalli in a decision-making role. To these one must add those who had originally supported Gonzi but who feel that in effective terms he has proved to be politically weak when confronted by the behaviour of such ministers as Austin Gatt.

Although personally I do not care two hoots as to whether Gonzi will reshuffle his cabinet or not, one thing is most likely: unless we have a reshuffle before Parliament reconvenes on 26 September, we seem destined to be lumped with the present Cabinet we have.

This is something which will fuel even more dissent among those belonging to the fourth grouping I mentioned earlier on.

Flawed logic

During recent months, the Bush administration has been intimating that a push for democracy in the Muslim world will improve US security.

A recent study by F. Gregory Gause III tried to address the question of whether democracy can stop terrorism. His reply, which has been published by the Council on Foreign Relations, is a resounding “No”. He argues that the data available does not show a strong relationship between democracy and an absence or reduction of terrorism.

Nor does he consider it likely that democratisation would end the current campaign against the United States. The author reaches his clear-cut conclusions on the basis of the argument that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are not fighting for democracy in the Muslim world but are, on the contrary, fighting to impose their vision of an Islamic state. When he poses the question as to what kind of governments would democracy produce, were it achieved in the Middle East, his reply is that a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington. Food for thought indeed!

Silver city

Two of my favourite American film directors, who specialise mainly in independent movies, are Jim Jarmusch and John Sayles. While I’m looking forward to the former’s most user-friendly recent movie Broken Flowers, which stars the perennial comedian Bill Murray, I have recently managed to catch up with Sayles’ Silver City.

It does to the movie business what Fahrenheit 9/11 did for the documentary business, in the sense that it models a man who would be governor of Colorado on George W. Bush Jr, amusing malapropisms and all.

Although it has been sold as a political thriller and has even been packaged as something comparable to Chinatown, to my mind it scores best as a biting political satire, lampooning the present incumbent of the US presidency without leaving much to the imagination.

Where the director succeeds is in that he manages to put together a stellar cast in such a way that although the movie is saturated with politics it manages to have the framework of a detective story.

The problem is that although it had a timely release in the US, it tends to be slightly dated by now since it was released in Europe only recently.

Don’t go expecting a Raymond Chandleresque movie as some have intimated. But if you are looking for an indictment of power and corruption in certain areas of American politics, then this is the film for you – irrespective of whether you rooted for Kerry or Bush during the latest presidentials in the US.

The film’s only flaw is that it is so cluttered with details and issues – from abortion to the death penalty and from illegal immigrants to environmental degradation – that it tends to lack a single focus, which those not interested in politics might find slightly off-putting.

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Leo Brincat is the main opposition spokesman for Foreign Affairs and IT.