Who would want to be a politician?

Your every move is scrutinised, your every glance, smile and frown is analysed. Every word is weighed for its meaning, its appropriateness and its impact. Pundits pounce on what you said and how you said it, and what you did or didn’t do…

Take the last few weeks, which have been replete with faux pas.

Gaffe speak

First we had the Prime Minister using the word “theatrics” to describe the Labour Party’s “manifestation” (another odd choice of word). He was referring to Joseph Muscat, but to the electorate it sounded like he was being contemptuous of them for protesting.

Not a wise move when people are already angry at you for not listening to them, and when you are eventually going to have to turn to these same people and ask them for their vote in a few years’ time.

“Teatrin” did you say?

* * *

Toni Abela’s “letter from Barack Obama”… read out during the “manifestation”.

This was not so much a gaffe as a “what on earth were you thinking?”

* * *

But the gaffe of the year must surely go to Austin Gatt who decided this would be a great time to buy a Jaguar to use for his official duties.

Minister, Minister… how could you? Here you are asking people to use smaller cars, and taxing them to their back teeth if they don’t.

You refuse to give us back our VAT on the registration tax (a double whammy of a tax if there ever was one), and now you go ahead and give yourself an early Christmas present.

But please everyone, spare a thought for the unfortunate Jaguar.

I wonder how it feels about being exported to a country where (despite all our taxes) the “roads” are so atrocious that its suspension will be turned into a pretzel within a month.

* * *

Scratch that. The worst political gaffe surely must go to Paul Borg Oliver for sending out an email, which ended up in the wrong hands, asking government departments to forward details of those who complain to the Nationalist Party. Just another smooth little PR trick used by the PN to ensure that it turns all its critics into happy bunnies in time for 2013.

* * *

Scratch that again. At the time of writing, the gaffe award must surely go to Maltastar for posting a confidential document about the new water and electricity rates, and not removing the author’s name from the “properties” function. The person who supposedly wrote the document was accused of using confidential information to which he was privy as a manager at Central Bank. The Labour Party, however, has since denied that the report came from this person.

Of course Austin Gatt is busy gloating over this, which takes some gall, considering that the hacking of the entire governmental IT system is still fresh in people’s memories.

Emails and computers may have made our lives easier, but they have also opened the floodgates for potential disaster. Maybe we should take a leaf out of the American government’s book. As President, Obama will not be allowed to have email access at all, not even a personal Blackberry to send his wife loving messages.

Now that’s security.

Budget speak

The “polluter pays” principle may sound good on paper, except for one detail. That is, if the pollution remains, the government pockets the money and to top it all off, it doesn’t seem to have a clue on how to spend it wisely.

Many have already pointed out the contradictions: why tax us on plastic bags, rather than ban them? Why tax us more for using older cars, rather than overhauling our public transport system, so we can leave our cars at home?

Why not give incentives to parents so it becomes a cheaper option for them to car pool rather than to keep forking out more money on expensive school transport?

Why increase the tax on all boats, even smaller ones with environmentally friendly engines? Why increase tax on sailing boats, of all things, which have no engine at all?

If our taxes were used well on things that really matter, we probably wouldn’t be so frustrated. However, the government’s approach to our money reminds me of a ditzy high maintenance woman who fritters away the household budget on nail art, waxing her legs and touching up her highlights, and then realises she has no money left to buy the groceries.

Yes, people are unhappy with the new budget measures and no amount of posturing about the international crisis is going to make them feel any

better. The fact is that the PN is not used to being unpopular – and Dr Gonzi e la bella compania don’t know quite how to handle it. This time around, there is no Alfred Sant who can be used as the whipping boy… in fact (shh, bejnietna) on several issues, he is actually being proved right.

Tweak speak

I watched Gonzi replying to Joseph Muscat’s reply to the Budget speech. Boy did he look pissed off. Now why is that?

At one point he burst loudly into heavily accented English and I was so startled I dropped the wooden spoon I was using to stir the tomato sauce. Tomato sauce everywhere. Crikey.

What interested me the most, however, was when he said he had received lots of emails from “ordinary people” who complained about the tax on large family cars which run on diesel, so now he is going to tweak this part of the budget. This filled me with lots of hope because now I know that all I have to do is email the Prime Minister and he will “tweak” whatever it is about the Budget that I really didn’t like.

Or, (considering Paul Borg Olivier’s instructions), maybe not. He might want to send me a hamper for Christmas.

Democracy speak

It’s funny how those who squawk so much about democracy and the fight for liberty and freedom of expression which took place in the 1980s, are the ones who seem to be having an epileptic fit because not everyone loves this government. What, exactly, is the problem here?

No, thank God, people are not beaten up any more for going to a demonstration; instead they are insulted and jeered at by name when they exercise their right to protest. In the 1980s people suffered physical bruises and in 2008 the bruising is psychological.

I often read comments in tones of sneering disbelief such as, “how can it be that half the country votes Labour”. The simplistic, prejudiced conclusion is that, therefore, half the country must belong to the lower income social scale and that they are vulgar and morons to boot.

(Although, of course, as everyone knows, someone is a backward dunce as long as he votes Labour or AD but suddenly becomes refined and intelligent on voting PN. Just look at how perceptions have changed about Eileen Montesin).

Perhaps there used to be a time when you could zero in on people’s political allegiance with an up-and-down glance, but those days are gone.

Brace yourselves. Labour voters do not all pertain to the unflattering stereotype which some are so fond of perpetuating, i.e. the loud, peroxide blond woman from Bormla who wears rather too many gold chains. A sizeable portion of the well-spoken, well-educated and well-dressed middle-class also casts its vote for the Malta Labour Party (a fact which seems too much for some people to stomach). The election results speak for themselves – it is obvious that there are a lot of people out there who vote Labour who don’t go around waving a party flag. Those who belong to this latter demographic keep their mouths zipped, not because they do not have the courage of their convictions, but because they know they will be snubbed, scorned and mocked.

AD voters are simply considered traitors to The Cause; tiresome pains in the backside who have the audacity to not be enamoured of either party. Floating voters? They are the real scum of the earth. Why can’t they just pick a side and decide for God’s sake?!

Welcome to democracy à la Maltaise.

We’ve gone from thugs and bullies in our streets to cyber bullying, complete with schoolyard taunts, nastiness and veiled and not so veiled attempts at intimidation. “You don’t know how to speak English, you must vote Labour”, is right up there in the intellectual stakes with one child tormenting another, “you’re fat, you’ve got pimples, you wear glasses… na na, na na, na”.

Real bullying still happens too, most noticeably in schools and in the workplace, especially if you happen to bear a surname that immediately identifies you as being related to a former Labour politician. Is this really the kind of Malta that the Nationalist Party had in mind when it fought so hard for free speech in the 1980s? The irony is just too cruel.

It is pretty preposterous that people have to defend their voting preferences or else hide them because of a possible vicious backlash. I really cannot relate to this type of bigotry.

If we were to put this in terms of racism, Labour voters seem to be the blacks and some fanatic Nationalist supporters are in danger of becoming the white supremacists.

Obama speak

One reason I admired Americans in this election is that after it was all over, most of them were capable of rising above partisan politics. I even heard staunch Republicans saying, “Obama is now my President, let’s all give him our support.”

Many Maltese people picked up on the fact that there was a distinct absence of party flags at both the McCain and Obama rallies. Actually, I don’t even think they have party flags there.

The reason for this lack of acrimony is pretty clear – in the United States, the “fight” is fought between the politicians and not the people. You rarely hear or read articles by political observers insulting the voters of either party (except for Ann Coulter, and most people regard her as wacko).

They attack the politicians and not those who voted for them – “The people have spoken” is the phrase that is often used.

Another difference is that there is complete respect for the office of the presidency. Bush is working hand in hand with Obama for the transition process to be smooth so that, when Obama takes office in January, there will be continuity in the running of the country.

I very much doubt whether Obama’s first decisions in office will be to rename a school or a street in order to spite Bush.

Or that Bush will place stumbling blocks in Obama’s way so that he won’t be able to govern.

As for John McCain, when he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he said: “The one thing Americans don’t want to see is a sore loser.” McCain will surely go down in history as the most gracious “loser” America has ever seen.

Maltese politics still has a long way to go to rise above its pettiness in this respect and the change has to come from the grassroots as well as the politicians.

When we stop making politicians into gods, and understand, once and for all, that they are there to serve us (and that we pay their salaries), that we put them there and we can take them down again, then maybe, just maybe, we will have finally grown up.

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