When Lou Bondi was a major guru-cum-spin doctor for the PN in pre-1996 Malta, Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party had its own newspaper and had published a story about him.

It was terrible mistake. It has earned us, all of us indiscriminately, the abiding enmity of Lou Bondi for over a decade, probably forever. Say Green and he sees red.

Nothing will ever persuade Lou that this was not a Green crusade to destroy him personally. He has returned to the issue fuming and ranting of Green infamy and hypocrisy on every possible occasion. His latest exploit in the series was his article “Licence to character kill”. It appears that what he assumes we ascribed to ourselves he has every right to misappropriate himself.

His target was Mark Causon our spokesperson on the environment who stands accused by Lou Bondi of carrying out illegal excavations in his garden in defiance of stop and enforcement notices and so on. This Lou considers to be damning evidence of Green hypocrisy and demands Mark Causon’s head.

Lou never called Mark to enquire about the matter, why should he? He had an official decision taken by MEPA, the most reliable of official sources on which to base a journalistic fiasco. Lou is wrong because MEPA is wrong. Although MEPA, documents refer to an enforcement notice issued against Mark Causon, it actually refers to another person in another development and has to do with an altogether different infraction. Lou has gone full circle and has placed himself in the excruciating position that the newspaper Alternattiva found itself thanks to the confirmation by a Police PRO. It could also cost him as much money if not more in a libel action.

Since Lou Bondi no longer holds any official post within the PN and works as a journalist albeit with avowed PN leanings, his anti-Green crusade is prosecuted as a personal affair. He simply carries on with the momentum gained from the roadblock affair. It could be his downfall.

So eager was he to denounce what he sees as Green hypocrisy that he failed to mention what the MEPA’s anti-Mark Causon crusade is all about. MEPA’s erroneous claims against Mark Causon came in a response from the MEPA PRO to a Green Party press conference condemning MEPA failings in a completely separate manner; excavations in a house at Hamrun endangering a World War II shelter and the Wignacourt Aqueduct.

Lou Bondi failed altogether to see the amazing escapade of the MEPA PRO. Assuming that Mark Causon actually is the hypocrite and lawbreaker Lou would like him to be, would it be of any relevance to the matter in Hamrun? Is this the way MEPA will respond to any objection in future? Should potential objectors be as pure as the driven snow before they dare open their mouths in their own defence or in defence of our national heritage? Is it possible that a journalist of Lou’s standing and experience fails to notice the howler? Or is it because the PN is in office and a Green is under unfair, incorrect and absurd attack? Yes, it is scandalous that MEPA behaves in this way and only blinkered partisans can fail to see it.

With regard to Lou’s attack on MaltaToday we have very little to say. We have absolutely no control as to what gets printed in that newspaper and therefore no responsibility for it. Lou should know better than that. Is he responsible for everything written in PN newspapers? MaltaToday is a commercial enterprise completely unconnected with Alternattiva Demokratika.

Much of its staff was recruited from AD. We take it as a compliment even though it has taken a severe toll on our human resources. We have sympathisers among journalists in every newspaper in the country. Does it mean that we control the media because our rivals suffer constant defections?

What is more to the point is that Lou, and some others, cannot stand the fact that Greens are able to show up their elder political competitors consistently. Lou simply cannot understand that it will always be this way.

The matter is structural. The PN and the MLP have ambitions to become the majority. In order to seduce voters from a very wide political spectrum, their spiel often sounds like everything and its opposite in the same breath. Mostly it sounds lowest common factor insults to the intelligence. It seems shallow and inconsistent, sometimes blatantly contradictory. Even sympathisers find the U-turns and the S-bends excruciatingly embarrassing. Sometimes it is sold as canny pragmatism, sometimes it is an inevitable political compromise. There always has to be some excuse for the natural distaste it provokes.

The fact is that Greens never engage in anything of the sort. We are not special. We are not extraordinarily holy or perfect. We are much more like very ordinary people who form an opinion and voice it. We have our ideas, our ideals and our principles, and our values to which we have been unshakeably loyal. It really is quite simple. That is why so many people find it so very attractive.

We are not holier than Lou. We simply have no need and no inclination to engage in the verbal gymnastics and mental contortions that an apologist for a major political party is obliged to engage in. We do not have something for everyone and we do not pretend that we do. We are satisfied that we enjoy the support of people who work out what we stand for and like it.

This is never going to change and Lou had better learn to live with it. If he would like the party he prefers to have a message as simple, as linear and clear as ours, he should begin by persuading it to stop trying to seduce more than half the country. To do that you have to be kaleidoscopic, not clear. You would also have to give up all ambitions to rule the country alone. We never had any such ambitions in the first place.

The PN and the MLP can never compete with the Greens on this ground. We never had ambitions to be populist. We do not need to be. We exist to end the era of political parties, which want to grow so big that they dominate not only all political life but also attempt to smother every other national voice in any other field of human activity by being what Oliver Friggieri has described as totalising political parties. We are not in this game at all.

Yes, it gives us the advantage of being newer, younger, cleaner and simpler. We do not have the advantages of controlling the system, changing the rules of the game as it suits us, of having a reputation for sleaze and therefore a perceived potential to dish it out. We cannot expect our supporters to forgive us for contradicting ourselves every few days as the other parties demand of their supporters for the good of the party. We have no role at all to play in the client-patron politics that dominate our political culture. We are glad to give up any hope of ever playing that game. We never wanted to. We want to change the status quo, not maintain it.

Lou seems to hate us because we are what he would like his party to be but knows that it never can be. We understand his frustration but showing it so clearly is no mark of intelligence or style. He should be able to do better than he has done so far.

Ralph Cassar is a spokesperson and executive member of Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party. e-mail: ralph.cassar@alternattiva.

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