From Mr A. Gauci Cunningham
It’s 2008 and a new Labour government has just been formed. The Labour supporters are over the moon, honking horns and singing praises to their leader Dr Alfred Sant!
The Nationalists have egg all over their face and are sulking in a dark lonely corner, trying to understand what went wrong.
Alternattiva are also very happy not because they elected an MP but because they got nearly 20,000 votes, mainly from the ninth and tenth districts! At last they can say that the third party makes a difference and they were the agents of change! Not of a coalition mind you, but of change!
The price of oil is going up and up while the American economy is ailing, affecting the rest of the world!
But the Maltese will have none of this; they are happy, especially the “Woods” and the “Saids” of this world, at last they have paid the PN back and they’ve sent the rotten Nationalists to the Opposition benches! Hohoho what’s Christmas next to this?
The price of oil keeps reaching new heights but our new “intelligent”, “capable”, more super than Super one Prime Minister doesn’t care so he slashes the surcharge by half... did anyone ask where the money would come from? Did anyone ask how this could be done in the light of ever increasing oil prices? Did anyone ask what plans Dr Sant has to decrease Malta’s dependency on oil?
Oh for heaven’s sake who cares? What’s important is that Dr Sant kept his word and now everyone can say how honest and serious our Prime Minister is. In fact he calls an extraordinary conference in the Kazin Laburista of “Hal Muxa” full of flag waving supporters to declare that “... what we promised we have done!”
Then all of a sudden, like a hurricane after a breeze, like a thunderstorm out of the blue in August, we hear that bloody word again, the word we all thought had become history, the word we all thought was dead for good: the Hofra!
Yes dear readers, it’s the hofra again, the wailing and screaming and oceans of tears in the kazini on each and every Sunday morning, as they tell us what a mess the ruthless Nationalists left behind them, how they cannot actuate their promises because of an irresponsible party led by irresponsible Gonzi!
In one fell swoop we start seeing clichés like “niggielidu l-gholi tal hajja”, “Il-haddiem mkisser bit taxxi” and “sena gdida bidu gdid” flushing themselves down the drain with such velocity that one would be forgiven for thinking that they were just part of a national collective hallucination.
Then PBS would be revamped: we’ll have the future MLP general secretary selling plants and a newcomer telling us how great the Labour project in Cottonera is and Where’s Everybody can pack up and leave. Instead of Xarabank we will have documentaries on Labour’s glorious years!
Then Dr Sant tells us he’s going to build a golf course in exactly the same place Gonzi had proposed, and a yacht marina in the same place they had shed litres of crocodile tears a year before with some environmentalist!
Astrid starts seeing red but the government has no time for this BS and says that that’s what’s needed (hekk hemm bzonn uwx!!).
Anyway, the first budget is characterised by its austerity, taxes on this and taxes on that and if anyone (like the UHM) starts giving trouble then off to court we’ll go! The hospital is not free anymore because the Nationalists spent too much money on it, and agencies such as Appogg get less money. The excuse? The Nationalists! They left the hofra!
Photo sessions of the Prime Minister on Maghtab and close to Smart City become everyday occurrences and also venues for Labour coffee mornings where Labour’s chattering classes say how good it was of Sant to get Smart City (... alla jbierek kemm igib xoghol il-Lejber!).
The hunters are left with nothing except a promise to “... re-negotiate the EU package”, which obviously cannot happen or maybe the hope of some “tbazwir” but again they get nothing! Whose fault is it again? Those cruel Nationalists, “enemies of the working class”, those “blue eyed fat cats”!
And then the projects start but they all start taking longer than planned and costs start spiralling out of control!
When asked why by Keith Demicoli, who would have just been demoted to Net News again, the minister says that even the Nationalists did that and anyway it’s not Labour’s fault, it’s that stupid drainage pipe that needed to be changed!
And the sounds of “bidu gdid” become like a relic of the nostalgic 2008 victory, bandied out every now and then with the tune “the only way is up”. There must be a way to distract the Labourites and the “Woods” and the “Saids”!!
And the tragicomedy of new beginnings keeps unfolding! Am I a fortune teller? No, I don’t think they exist anymore after Peppi’s Xarabank programme on the subject! I am just a normal citizen who follows politics quite closely, who knows that the MLP under Dr Sant have become so predictable, so lost for innovation, so full of finely threaded propaganda that I think it doesn’t take a mg of grey matter to predict the situation of this country if led again (weren’t 22 months enough?) by Dr Sant and the Labour Party he has created over the last 16 long years!
Albert Gauci Cunningham
ST PAUL’S BAY