Now that the GonziPN 2008 electoral slogan, which, even perhaps by the Prime Minister’s indirect admission this week was transposed into a style of government, has been shelved in favour of a return to a ‘people’s PN’, the direction in which the government is heading after these recent long, dark months in politics, is now becoming clearer.

The GonziPN slogan worked wonders in the 2008 general election in which the PN pitted its leader and incumbent Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi against then Opposition leader Alfred Sant. Running what was in effect a modified version of an American electoral campaign brought the party back from the apparent brink of electoral defeat to a quite unexpected victory at the polls.

Truth be told, it was only the Opposition that continued to use the slogan after the election, but which others, including MP Franco Debono and all that his opinion on such matters entails these days, saw transformed into a style of government.

Now that that has been scrapped, and following Dr Gonzi’s speech last Sunday that inspired and reunited much of the PN rank and file, will it be enough to salvage what has been an arguably disastrous legislature?

As our sister daily newspaper rightly questioned earlier this week, is it a case of too little, too late? Only time – or the next justice or money bill and, ultimately, the next general election – will tell.

Out with discrimination,

in with legal rights

One must wholeheartedly welcome the new and improved hate crimes Bill that will be moved in Parliament on Monday, and it would be difficult to imagine the Bill not speeding through Parliament given the wide-ranging outcry in the wake of two incidents of alleged sexual-orientation based violence.

The new Bill will amend sections of the criminal and press codes to ensure that crimes motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity are considered aggravated offences at law.

But while such an initiative cannot be applauded enough, one must still question why this was not done decades ago, as had been done in much of the Western world.

Homophobia, hate crimes and discrimination in all its ugly, malicious forms – both hidden and open – can only begin to significantly abate when, first and foremost, the correct laws are put in place. It is only then that society as a whole will have the message drummed home. The powers that be must lead by the example of legislating.

This has now been done and it is up to the rest of society to follow suit and to no longer accept violence or even the type of psychological violence that only those who have been discriminated against can attest to.

Out of the corridors, in with dignity

After all the recent and obviously miserably failed attempts to tweak the beds situation at Mater Dei Hospital, one cannot but welcome the concept pitched by the Union Haddiema Maghqudin last week for the creation of a task force dedicated to thrashing out the problem, crisis, travesty – call it what you will – of hospital patients being stripped of their dignity and their right to appropriate care at the country’s state of the art hospital.

The suggestion is even more sensible, and pressing, given the fact that the flu season is well and truly upon us, which means more and more patients being lined up on beds in the hospital’s corridors. It does not take a doctor to appreciate that this does not bode well for the healing process, or for the doctors and nurses plying the hallways and attempting to deliver the care that they give so well in such cramped conditions.

At this point, it is quite irrelevant if the authorities or a union – or all of them for that matter – are to blame for the situation. What is important is that the matter is sorted out once and for all. Whether that will mean adding the new 16-bed ward that was mentioned last week, or even another whole new structure to the hospital, something simply must be done, and done now.

Any such task force should also use the Ombudsman’s recent recommendations on the situation of elderly patients being dumped into the hospital system as one of its main points of departure. This state of affairs is almost, and possibly equally, as disgraceful as patients being kept in the corridors.