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| AST and Joseph Muscat just back from Gaddafi's Libya |
Joseph Muscat, the PL leader, made the following statement:
"... llum spiċċa
ż-żmien għad-diskorsi partiġġjani mimlijin attakki dwar il-passat. Għal dawn
id-diskorsi tal-passat, irridu nirreaġixxu bil-viżjoni tagħna
għall-futur."
I find this statement rather odd for three reasons.
First, it is the Labour leader himself who has redirected the public's attention towards the past. Did he really expect Karmenu Vella, Alex Sciberras Trigona, Reno Calleja, Maria Camilleri and so many others to be brought back from the political dead and no one does a backward double take? Even Alfred Sant, for all his strategic ineptitude, knew the pitfalls of this one.
Making matters worse for himself, Joseph Muscat did not just bring these people back as a nod to Labour's past. He is giving them real positions with real power.
Secondly, how can Joseph Muscat delete the past when the very same people he has brought back are glorifying it today? If Karmenu Vella still refers to the 1970s and 1980s as the 'Golden Years' and if Alex Sciberras Trigona prefers to go underground rather than publicly recant his past with Gaddafi's regime, how can Joseph Muscat expect today's generation not to revisit those years with interest?
Thirdly, how can Joseph Muscat's call be taken seriously when his party colleagues and media are obsessed with the past if they think they might score a political point from it.
Let us make a little insignificant comparison for now. I stopped working for the PN in 1997, almost a decade and a half ago. And I was just a backroom boy, never a politician. Karmenu Vella has a political past that stretches back four decades and which is considerably, shall we say, more politically colourful than mine.
Yet Joseph Muscat and his media want people to treat my past as the present and Karmenu Vella's past as non-existent.
Selective amnestia anyone?
2 comments:
Joseph Muscat is caught between two stools: trying to woo disgruntled PN supporters while simultaneously appealing to mouldy rabid Mintoffjani.
He knows that, however disgruntled with government they may be, no one who remembers the Mintoff-KMB years would go anywhere near him if they suspected that his party is really the MLP in PL's clothing.
He is therefore in the curious position of hoping that some remember the "golden years' while others forget them.
It was KMB who once said that different audiences have to be told different things but, of course, it's impossible nowadays with the amount of free media and information sources that are thankfully present in our country.
It is difficult to figure out what good bringing those people back is supposed to do.
He must be trying to recreate the party his family and probably himself worshiped.
Are these choices made out of strategic importance or out of nostalgia- a longing to give the old crowd another chance under his leadership?
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