While a beleaguered leadership wannabe like Mario de Marco finds himself uncomfortably echoing the Austin Gatt-RCC GonziPN spun mantra that Joseph Muscat is keeping mum because he has no policies to offer, I am sure that as an otherwise smart person he is fully aware of what Jack Straw has just stated in his recent frank autobiography:

“The trap all governing parties lay is to demand more and more details of their opponent’s policies as early as possible. We (Labour) fell for that in the 1980s and early 1990s and we lost”

So much for those who have been repeatedly nudging us by claiming editorially in parrot-like fashion that it is time for Labour to lay its cards on the table. Things only changed for British Labour when Blair proved to be smarter and wiser; while intelligently avoiding such a potential minefield.

Nobody can accuse Muscat of being aimless and rudderless.

He has not only already set out his vision and the positive directional change that he would like to bring about if entrusted to govern, but even more importantly he has outlined and redefined the set of priorities that any respected and self-respecting government should base its country’s future on.

What someone has just said about the British political class tends to fit GonziPN perfectly.

Primarily, that to most ordinary people it feels as though they inhabit a grand yacht drifting farther and farther from mainland view. They’re not like real people. They don’t seem to understand any longer who average Maltese are or how they live.

This is the change that we need to bring about as otherwise “a depressing number of the electorate will feel that nothing ever really changes”.

GonziPN has created a mood of cynicism and disillusionment in Maltese politics – a trap EFA never fell into – because his strategists (who incidentally are the same people who ran the show at the time of the PN’s 1996 electoral defeat) have not yet smelt the coffee and realised that arrogance compounded with greed and an insatiable lust for power, will only speed up their party’s journey to self-destruction.

And that is exactly what we have experienced during the past week.

After an otherwise successful 5+5 conference that was marred only according to the independent press by very poor logistical arrangements, and the very good news that Malta will be the European Capital of Culture in 2018, it has been downhill all the way for GonziPN during the past week or so.

It made the word ‘imploding’ almost sound like an understatement.

The mishandled St Philip’s Hospital saga (which Gonzi did not even mention once on Sunday) not only had echoes of the last minute pre-electoral deal when a murky Gozo Channel vessels’ purchase deal was struck literally on election eve in 1996, but it also personified the arrogance of the Gonzi administration as well as its by now characteristic disregard for what has long been reduced to nothing more than a mere rubberstamp Parliament.

As to be expected, we had the usual vacuous mantra that an oil find could happen and that drilling (accompanied by rosy prospects) is likely to kick off by the end of the year.

We had a billboard battle that was mainly characterised by the PN’s plagiarism and total lack of originality – that further confirms how right Simon Busuttil must have been when he lamented publicly the other week about the ineffective negativism that his party’s campaigning has shown so far.

And then we had the worst disaster that could have happened for Malta – PR wise – in the same country where the MTA spends millions of euros in understandably promoting Malta as one of the most modern and attractive tourist destinations in the Med – the UK.

The way the bendy buses saga in Malta was ridiculed by Britain’s most popular Conservative politician Boris Johnson (London’s Mayor) in full view of a British Premier who almost fell off his seat with laughter, portrayed us as a third-world state in the Med rather than the cosmopolitan destination that we often try to promote ourselves as being.

In his typical knee-jerk reaction of a reply, Austin Gatt was so much lost for words that he did not even manage to spell Johnson’s surname correctly.

While other countries have tended to use bailouts to save banks and key institutions, in Malta the St Philip’s Hospital saga has shown that our government has been far more interested in bailing out a bankrupt and long abandoned hospital, where unconfirmed rumours continue to abound about the actual condition that their MRI and X-ray machines happen to be in. Meanwhile it will be good to find out if they still have any tax, NI or water and electricity bills outstanding!

Government’s decision over the weekend to push ahead with the deal regardless of the public uproar will only serve to reinforce the arrogant streak and image that GonziPN has. Speaking for myself I have over the past weeks met various eminent members of the medical profession who could not understand why the same amount of money was not being spent on renovating the abandoned St Luke’s Hospital (or part of it) which after all is government property. But then this could be also perceived – rightly or wrongly – as payback time. A subtle manner of attempting to buy certain dissidents’ silence.

I nevertheless find it rather ironic that the same person involved and main beneficiary – a former PN President and Nationalist MP – was until recently quite vocal in denouncing government and turning the heat against it, primarily for its lack of transparency and apparent reluctance to ward off and fight corruption and nepotism. In the medical and hospital business too.

The only consistency that we have experienced last week was manifest in government’s pig headedness and resolve to continue clinging to power at all costs, regardless of any potential impact and the nation’s overall well-being. This was reflected in the manner in which the House Business Committee found itself engineered to fail once again to reach an agreement for the second time in a week on when to hold the car parks privatisation debate as well as for how long it should run.

The lesson from this morass and state of political decay in which the whole country has been allowed to wallow, is that the only approach for the modern politician is to be straight with people.

GonziPN can no longer do such a thing, as by now they have even lost the authenticity that requires them only to be themselves. The same goes for their warped sense of priorities, values and intentions.

Meanwhile, the nation continues to suffer, with the PN continuing to show complete disregard for polls and public opinion.

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www.leobrincat.com

Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change