Born to lead?

One of the PNs favourite tactics is to bully people into submission and expect them to lie down and die quietly without even a single whimper.

It seems that JPO never intended to lie down and die without a struggle that is threatening the stability of the entire Nationalist government.

Let’s look at some facts.

JPO was used as a secret weapon to win the last elections by Joe Saliba and Richard Cachia Caruana who knew that the Mistra issue was a hot one and needed a 360 degree spin to drop it back onto Labour’s lap. The morality of the maneuver is extremely questionable, but the Nationalist Party has never let something as inconsequential as morals block the road to victory at the polls.

Dr. Fenech Adami’s blatant lie on Dr. Alfred Sant’s conduct regarding his son’s entry into the University on the eve of the 2003 election is a very relevant example that shows that even the religious conscious Demo-Christian President Emeritus was ready to resort to lying to win an election.

Speaking of lies, although Richard Cachia Caruana never negated Labour’s recordings of him complaining that Guido Demarco doesn’t like him very much and liking Brigadier Calleja, still published a reply accusing the Labour Party of, basically, lying!

Then the Demarcos jumped on the band-wagon!

They also expected all those who heard RCCs voice accusing their father to forget what they had heard and issued another press release about leaving dead people lie, as if it was the Labour Party who had mentioned their father in the first place.

Then we had the Prime Minister arguing that once PNs executive had decided that RCC was innocent of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s accusations, everything should go back to normal. Does this guy never tire of saying the same thing and expect people to believe him?

He’s been saying that everything will go back to normal after every single crisis for the last six months as if wishing for something will actually make it happen. Has he managed to brain-wash himself that everything is A-OK and that he’s living in La-la land?

His attitude towards people from his very own party who feel hurt and offended by his demeanor cannot be explained very easily either. Gonzi knew that he started the last legislature on the wrong foot and disregarded the fact that he had one of the slimmest majorities in Malta’s modern political history. He fudged things when he dismissed ministers such as Jesmond Mugliett, Ninu Zammit and Censu Galea by sending them a simple SMS and chose candidates that obtained much less votes than others such as Franco Debono, Robert Arrigo,  Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Jean Pierre Farrugia and many others, and expected them to be quiet.

And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the new style of politics Gonzi promised during his Victory Speech of 2008.

Did he mean that the new Nationalist government was going to be more one-sided than usual?

Did he infer that the party’s inner echelon would be even more exclusive than ever before?

Did he mean price hikes of 200% or more in the prices of oil, petrol and gas?

Did he mean a hefty increase of 500 Euros to his bench?

GonziPNs new style of politics eventually culminated ina system very similar to that of Totalitarian states he likes to criticize so much where every important post is occupied by sycophants, relatives and party people; where the words “meritocracy” and “accountability” have been crossed out of the dictionary, the “Great Leader” cannot be criticized and is supreme, and where everything is legislated according to the rights of the few who wield all the power rather than the rights of the many.

The divorce issue was a case in point and the IVF and gay cohabitation issues will surely be others. No wonder many are praying that the current government collapses before parliament reconvenes because they know that the Labour Party has already promised that these laws will give minorities and socially discriminated groups the rights they deserve.

Finally, Gonzi’s attitude that no one can oppose him surely shows how insular and authoritarian he’s becoming. Oh sure, the Nationalist Party has all the structures for passing a fair judgement on dissident members, but Gonzi’s hold on these structures is so absolute that they have become an extension of himself.

Jeffrey actually showed that RCC did try to collude with Joe Mizzi and Karmenu Vella who corroborated his accusations, but Gonzi did not want to listen and did not accept their testimony. To make matters worse, he put all the blame on the Labour Party to shift the limelight to them. He was only interested in exonerating RCC and the entire party structure followed suit. This is surely not democracy in action, even if all the democratic structures were in place and should have worked to preserve a fair and democratic debate within the party. Instead, it was hijacked by the Prime Minister so that he would emerge stronger.

Whether he actually did emerge stronger is debatable, but no one can say that Gonzi does not have the party firmly under his thumb. Worse is his attitude that once his opponents have been dealt a mortal wound, they have no right to retaliate.  This actually belies the fact that Gonzi encapsulates the mindset that the Nationalist Party was born to rule. Just looking at Daphne’s blog shows the utter contempt she heaps upon Labourites who are regarded as the great unwashed and who should never be allowed to rule the country. In fact, Gonzi actually expected all three dissident MPs to lay down arms and accept their fates.  

This type of thinking actually boggles the mind and shows the way people like Lawrence Gonzi and his retinue within his oligarchy think. They are the chosen few and even criticizing them is unacceptable. They can lie and cheat, but if someone uses the same tactics against them, he’s immoral. They are allowed to heap injustices upon Labourites, but if they suffer some sort of injustice, they are being discriminated. It is not just a case of two weights and two measures, but a case of social discrimination by a group of people who think they are better and worthier than everybody else. It is a dangerous and archaic mindset that harks back to the time of royalty and classism, and it is GonziPNs main weapon against the Labour Party.In a nutshell, Lawrence Gonzi and his cronies think they’re better than everybody else and were born to lead our country!

Epicurus