The news that Karl Gouder has been chosen to replace Michael Frendo in Parliament, when the latter takes up the role of Speaker of the House, will clear up for many the mystery of why he has been selected for attack over the past couple of weeks.
In situations like this, it’s always best to keep an eye to the unknown enemy within more than to the known enemy without. Known enemies can be expected always to do their worst. Unless one is particularly dull, one knows who and where they are and what they will do. The unknown enemy within is trickier. These sorts rarely show their hand because it does not pay them to do so, but mainly because they are fearful and nasty pieces of work.
While they tell themselves they are cleverly following the advice of Nicolo Macchiavelli – though this is unlikely, as it would entail reading a book – what they are really doing is giving in to the sort of impulses that might have had them beaten up in the school locker-room for ratting on their classmates, or in the case of girls, for ganging up and doing that sort of small-time, small-minded bullying at which they are excellent: lots of whispering in corners, silence as the targeted one enters the room, plenty of nudging and giggling and, as I seem to remember one girl doing to another girl I knew, leaving used tampons in her desk.
Why would agents of the Labour Party suddenly pick on Karl Gouder, an employee of the Nationalist Party’s information office, pointlessly and out of the blue? That’s because the hidden hand was almost certainly not Labour’s, but Labour’s unofficial media channels were used.
Good luck, Karl – you’ll need it. But then the Nationalist Party needs you in Parliament.
A law unto himself
The only time I ever see my old Milner Street neighbour, John Attard Montalto, now that we no longer chance upon each other on visits to our parents because his have died and I can never find a parking space, is on planes and at airports. He is unfailingly jolly and exuberant, though when we met after Easter – in an airport – I couldn’t help but notice that time and strain are taking their toll. No doubt he said the same of me.
I must confess to having a soft spot for Attard Montalto, and not just because we both played out the first part of our lives on the same street corner, albeit with a gap of some 15 years. I am immensely entertained by his ability to carry off the role of the eccentric aristocrat – and what’s more, in the Labour Party’s fold – doing exactly as he pleases, when he pleases, without giving a stuff what other people think, and always getting away with it.
Why, he even succeeded in getting himself re-elected as an MEP, even if it entailed giving away kitchen utensils to large crowds of adoring women, something I teased him about mercilessly on the Internet and which he appeared to find as funny as I did. I was especially amused when he pipped Marlene ‘I’m a businesswoman studying for a PhD’ Mizzi to the post despite – or perhaps because of – his campaign tomfoolery.
Over the years he has regaled his bemused audiences with his love of world cruises, posed for an election campaign photograph wearing a shirt emblazoned with the logo of a major cruise line, challenged Alfred Sant, while wearing a track-suit bearing the arms of yet another cruise line, to the party leadership, married (his second, her first) the mother of his schoolgirl daughter on board a cruise ship during a two-month world cruise and concomitant sabbatical from the European Parliament, and advertised a live link to the ceremony, so that we could all watch it, which many of us did, travels the globe endlessly on official and perhaps semi-official business, sends dispatches to the media from remote locations, whizzes about as though in a daze when he is not in a daze at all, and writes occasional pieces for the newspapers which at times are replete with wry, dry, erudite humour that are as much the real JAM (as his car number-plate has him) as the one who chats up old ladies at campaign meetings and hands out balloon whisks and slotted spoons.
He has been in Sudan for some time now, overseeing the electoral process, or so we are told. This has provoked a great deal of irritation among fellow MEPs, none of whom – and by this I mean the lot of them – has even a fraction of his ‘I don’t care what you think because I’m going to do it anyway’ panache. Their frustration at the fact that he was elected once more and now they must contend with him is quite palpable.
I can’t say I blame them, because while John Attard Montalto sails on with his charmed life oblivious to the fuming rage of his colleagues, leaving a sea of frowns in his beaming wake, they are the ones who must clean up after him. He might not be the most committed, hardworking and zealous MEP that Malta will ever have, but he’s worth it for that flash of eccentric, couldn’t-care-less style that everyone else in politics so sorely lacks. The place for the weird and the wonderful is in the European Parliament. Most countries appear to know that, and have delivered their fair share to Brussels. John Attard Montalto, with his love of cruises, his absolute lack of hypocrisy, his kitchen utensils and his original take on life, is ours.
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