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It takes astounding cheek, bravado on a swashbuckling scale, remarkable guts and very little brains to respond to complaints about the gas shortage by talking about the 1980s chocolate shortage. Particularly so when you are the minister responsible for the current shortage: the cold meals and freezing toes up to one’s knees. Austin Gatt thought he put Labour in its place by recalling their own fiascos in the late Paleolithic.
It was cold comfort to the victims of his own failures. In one fresh urban legend an old couple hired a taxi to take them down to the filling plant to replace their gas cylinder. It is probably true. The resentment of freezing families cooking on camping stoves and antique paraffin stoves is immense. The very idea of shutting them up with tales about contraband chocolate in the bad old days is too audacious for words. Nor is it very clever.
The gas shortage, apart from exploding Austin Gatt’s aura as the PN go-getter management wizard, has indecently exposed his mindset. He thinks that the whole country ossified with him in his politically formative years. The chances of anyone ever returning to the 1980s is pure hogwash. Besides, the people who matter, young people, were not even there at the time. They don’t give a damn about his wretched chocolate stories. Austin is probably the best that the PN can produce at this time. Wow.
The Greens have watched this absurd exchange for years. It is like listening to one’s parents having a tiff and learning all the shortcomings of one’s ancestors. What good does it do? It is no consolation that the other side had once done worse. It is a diabolical mechanism, a downward spiral justifying the next disaster without offering any remedy or hope of improvement.
In another version of the KMB contradiction in terms, “the aristocracy of the workers”, Gatt-style haughtiness speaks of another one such contradiction: the aristocracy of the middle-class. It is the caricature of an English milord humphing that he never apologises on principle. It simply does not make any sense.
The PN needs to re-exhume the 1980s to recover a fast fading raison d’etre. It is more than nostalgia for its best ever era. It desperately needs to re-evoke the emotions of the days when the middle-class went to battle. It is the party that needs this nonsense not the people, not its supporters and certainly not the middle-class.
It is not what the country needs. In these dire straits what we need least is division into two warring camps. We need to be able to engage all the country’s resources to address our economic challenges. The economy doesn’t give a damn about brains frozen in the no-chocolate era. It is less forgiving than Austin Gatt can ever get unapologetic.
Greens are convinced that the country’s one perennial political problem is the permanence of the two party system.
They need to preserve the status quo and they have no hope of ending zero sum politics. We exist to challenge the stagnation to drive it towards a change for the better.
It is more than just talk and slogans. We have already been at work for years. In every local council where we have elected councillors our presence reduced the friction between the colliding blocks of our rivals. We made it very hard for them to carry on as before. Some of them found it disorienting that we had no qualms about supporting first one side and then another depending on who happened to be right at the time. With practice fellow councillors get used to the idea. They are sure to have our support on anything that improves the quality of life of residents. We could not care less who had which idea first as long as something gets done.
At this time we are working in this way in Sliema, Swieqi, Birkirkara and Lija. In the face of the absurd partisanship found elsewhere the Green presence is a very valuable contribution quite apart from the hands-on experience of Green councillors in dealing with residents’ problems. This in fact has been our permanent task in and out of office for 15 years. We seem to have done nothing but support residents all over the place in dealing with issues they face from time to time. We never ask about their political affiliation, we just help out whenever we can. We never worry about the chocolate era and we have not a thought that many of them are still supportive of the present regime that thinks it’s the bees knees.
This time round we face elections in St Julian’s, Pembroke, St Paul’s Bay, Iklin, Mellieha, and Nadur. There is a good chance that we will break the ice in these localities also. In some we have a good chance of engaging the locality’s full potential. Just one small example. In St Julian’s Labour has proposed the setting up of a dispensary to allow senior citizens in Ta’ Giorni to collect their medicines without undue stress. It is a great idea that will come to nothing if Labour bag their usual quota of council seats. A Green seat would mean that they would have support on this initiative. Why ever not?
It means that MLP promises will not remain just promises in a locality where they are destined to be a minority far into the future. It is no loss to our PN colleagues. They can rest assured that they will have our equally enthusiastic support for any idea that can improve the lot of St Julian’s residents. They know it. What this means is that the whole community in any given locality can confidently feel able to contribute to its own welfare and progress and not only when and if its team is on top. It means that it makes no sense to perpetuate the partisan row.
It is a new kind of politics. It is what the country needs and not just a handful of localities. We are not going away and have the time and commitment to see the whole project through. Right now we are concentrating on six localities. It is a matter of a few small steps at a time. It is a change for the better and we are all gaining on it. It doesn’t take guts. It takes brains: common sense and steadfast commitment.
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