That many of the letters and messages sent to Prime Minister Gonzi by an assortment of his own disgruntled backbenchers came to see the light of day in the media on Valentine’s Day may have given them a whiff of false bon amour. That it also happened at the peak of Carnival may, on the other hand, have added a touch of the comic stuff to them.

People have been rightly asking: what is happening at Castile? If government MPs have felt the need to publicly show their disenchantment with the Gonzi leadership, one is naturally apt to wonder what the rest of the country is feeling, let alone an Opposition that is gradually but surely harnessing more support for its innovative way of doing politics.

The innovation, though, is not restricted to Joseph Muscat’s ever-growing movement. That a Nationalist MP would one day have enough guts to take to task his or her party leadership when it is in power was, for many, as likely as the Maltese national football squad making it to the FIFA World Cup finals. That more than one isolated Nationalist MP would actually do so was as remote from people’s minds and expectations as the issue of planting a lonesome condom machine on the university campus really is.

But it has happened. Against all odds. Jean-Pierre Farrugia’s electronic tirade against the Prime Minister has given vent to the hopes and ambitions of the rest of the so-called Gang of Seven (some say it’s really nine) coming so soon after Franco Debono’s public tantrums. The episode reminded one of the time when Alec Douglas-Home, who was British Foreign Secretary in the 1960s, received a telegram, the lame predecessor of today’s email, in which an irate constituent simply said: “To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.”

The sending and publication of last week’s exchange of emails may have all been the profusion of desperate love on Valentine’s Day. Next came the carnival fun expressed in the manner in which the Prime Minister and his entourage reacted to the new spate of media revelations of party discontent. The smile has lost its sparkle and been replaced by a masochistic approach to this whole public display of hostility. In fact, every MP or government party hopeful who has expressed doubts about Gonzi’s beleaguered leadership and shown dissatisfaction with what is being proposed on various national issues, is, according to the Prime Minister himself, an able and trusted colleague. Crudely interpreted, it really means with friends like these, who needs enemies?

What the Prime Minister has to say privately about each and every dissident that has come out in the open vastness of Maltese public domain is of course another story. He cannot be happy watching the ship leaking so fast that it is already listing dangerously. Nor can he take comfort from the fact that the old Nationalist tradition of extreme omertá on the part of the party faithful has now been broken and laid bare by a new generation of brave young MPs.

The present scenario has all the trimmings of a Saint Sebastian martyrdom, ironically often used in cartoons to depict the former Labour leader, Alfred Sant, when he had to contend with a similar, though much less wholesome, situation some years back. Love letters from home become painful arrows entering the Castile corpus from all angles imaginable.

If politics really is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy, then Prime Minister Gonzi is doing a wonderful job. He may believe he has the Churchillian ability to foretell what is happening tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. But does he have the ability to explain why it didn’t happen?

At this moment in time of confusion, with its self-destruct tactics the Castile coterie is certainly doing its best to give credence to George Orwell, in his “Shooting an Elephant” of 1950, when he wrote that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

It is probably why persistent journalists at the end of Sunday get-togethers are being brushed off by half-smiling, half-smirking party henchmen on doorsteps of village party clubs or else regaled with yet another beaming Gonzi howler like comparing the weather in France with that in Malta when faced with questions that scream for an official answer. That is no way to deal with the media. Politicians who complain about the media are like ships’ captains who complain about the sea.

Perhaps the most negative aspect of this boiling political cauldron is the dilly-dallying with parliamentary democracy. In our amazement and complete concentration on what some government MPs have been up to of late, we have given little or no thought to the fact that we have a government prepared to stall parliamentary sessions through a longer, more convenient recess when it knows it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, for it to maintain its single-seat majority in the House.

This is not too far off the practice of silent dictatorship, unhappily resorted to by the Gonzi government in defiance of an Opposition that has not, in truth, been unkind in its treatment of ad hoc pairing agreements when the interests of the nation, that often include the overseas and EU engagements of ministers and parliamentary secretaries, are at stake. No government, however, should expect to be accorded this privilege, and the breathing space attached to it, when it is merely a question of political survival. The Gonzi government’s action is a very sad and cynical way of dealing with the country’s highest institution.

Where to from here? Jean-Pierre Farrugia could not have been any clearer. The old Nationalist tactic of turning rusting metal flowers into blooming daffodils on the eve of an election can hardly be expected to work any more. Gonzi is faced with a new generation of politicians, on both sides of the House, who believe in a different, more refreshing way of doing politics. The time to say goodbye may come much earlier than we think. Love letters would then take the form and tone of a “Dear John” letter, though from another John’s point of view, it could all prove to be quite convenient.

If, by fair means or foul, the goodbye does not come from Castile, it would, in due time, come from across the lowlands.

That many of the letters and messages sent to Prime Minister Gonzi by an assortment of his own disgruntled backbenchers came to see the light of day in the media on Valentine’s Day may have given them a whiff of false bon amour. That it also happened at the peak of Carnival may, on the other hand, have added a touch of the comic stuff to them.

People have been rightly asking: what is happening at Castile? If government MPs have felt the need to publicly show their disenchantment with the Gonzi leadership, one is naturally apt to wonder what the rest of the country is feeling, let alone an Opposition that is gradually but surely harnessing more support for its innovative way of doing politics.

The innovation, though, is not restricted to Joseph Muscat’s ever-growing movement. That a Nationalist MP would one day have enough guts to take to task his or her party leadership when it is in power was, for many, as likely as the Maltese national football squad making it to the FIFA World Cup finals. That more than one isolated Nationalist MP would actually do so was as remote from people’s minds and expectations as the issue of planting a lonesome condom machine on the university campus really is.

But it has happened. Against all odds. Jean-Pierre Farrugia’s electronic tirade against the Prime Minister has given vent to the hopes and ambitions of the rest of the so-called Gang of Seven (some say it’s really nine) coming so soon after Franco Debono’s public tantrums. The episode reminded one of the time when Alec Douglas-Home, who was British Foreign Secretary in the 1960s, received a telegram, the lame predecessor of today’s email, in which an irate constituent simply said: “To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.”

The sending and publication of last week’s exchange of emails may have all been the profusion of desperate love on Valentine’s Day. Next came the carnival fun expressed in the manner in which the Prime Minister and his entourage reacted to the new spate of media revelations of party discontent. The smile has lost its sparkle and been replaced by a masochistic approach to this whole public display of hostility. In fact, every MP or government party hopeful who has expressed doubts about Gonzi’s beleaguered leadership and shown dissatisfaction with what is being proposed on various national issues, is, according to the Prime Minister himself, an able and trusted colleague. Crudely interpreted, it really means with friends like these, who needs enemies?

What the Prime Minister has to say privately about each and every dissident that has come out in the open vastness of Maltese public domain is of course another story. He cannot be happy watching the ship leaking so fast that it is already listing dangerously. Nor can he take comfort from the fact that the old Nationalist tradition of extreme omertá on the part of the party faithful has now been broken and laid bare by a new generation of brave young MPs.

The present scenario has all the trimmings of a Saint Sebastian martyrdom, ironically often used in cartoons to depict the former Labour leader, Alfred Sant, when he had to contend with a similar, though much less wholesome, situation some years back. Love letters from home become painful arrows entering the Castile corpus from all angles imaginable.

If politics really is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy, then Prime Minister Gonzi is doing a wonderful job. He may believe he has the Churchillian ability to foretell what is happening tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. But does he have the ability to explain why it didn’t happen?

At this moment in time of confusion, with its self-destruct tactics the Castile coterie is certainly doing its best to give credence to George Orwell, in his “Shooting an Elephant” of 1950, when he wrote that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.

It is probably why persistent journalists at the end of Sunday get-togethers are being brushed off by half-smiling, half-smirking party henchmen on doorsteps of village party clubs or else regaled with yet another beaming Gonzi howler like comparing the weather in France with that in Malta when faced with questions that scream for an official answer. That is no way to deal with the media. Politicians who complain about the media are like ships’ captains who complain about the sea.

Perhaps the most negative aspect of this boiling political cauldron is the dilly-dallying with parliamentary democracy. In our amazement and complete concentration on what some government MPs have been up to of late, we have given little or no thought to the fact that we have a government prepared to stall parliamentary sessions through a longer, more convenient recess when it knows it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, for it to maintain its single-seat majority in the House.

This is not too far off the practice of silent dictatorship, unhappily resorted to by the Gonzi government in defiance of an Opposition that has not, in truth, been unkind in its treatment of ad hoc pairing agreements when the interests of the nation, that often include the overseas and EU engagements of ministers and parliamentary secretaries, are at stake. No government, however, should expect to be accorded this privilege, and the breathing space attached to it, when it is merely a question of political survival. The Gonzi government’s action is a very sad and cynical way of dealing with the country’s highest institution.

Where to from here? Jean-Pierre Farrugia could not have been any clearer. The old Nationalist tactic of turning rusting metal flowers into blooming daffodils on the eve of an election can hardly be expected to work any more. Gonzi is faced with a new generation of politicians, on both sides of the House, who believe in a different, more refreshing way of doing politics. The time to say goodbye may come much earlier than we think. Love letters would then take the form and tone of a “Dear John” letter, though from another John’s point of view, it could all prove to be quite convenient.

If, by fair means or foul, the goodbye does not come from Castile, it would, in due time, come from across the lowlands.