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Karl Schembri
It has all the ingredients of a parochial politician’s electoral campaign in the village of Don Camillo, but the man spearheading the upcoming Sunday circus will be none other than the Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi.
Nationalist Party functionaries are right now busy marking down the friendly and not so friendly streets from where the prime minister will be conducting his new series of walkabouts in different localities every Sunday from next month.
But the first task for the PN central office is to identify the “ideal zuntier” (Church parvis), according to PN insiders, where people gather after Sunday mass so that Gonzi could mingle with the churchgoers.
In fact, according to the plans attributed to Secretary General Joe Saliba and information officer Gordon Pisani, the prime minister will be going to a different locality every Sunday accompanied by his wife and kick off by attending mass – in line with the Nationalist tradition of Religio et Patria – in churches where people tend to linger on the parvis after celebration.
“The point is to mix with them and give them the idea that the prime minister is listening,” PN sources say. “So it would be ideal to go to church wherever people remain talking on the parvis after the mass, rather than just disappear.”
Starting in Rabat, the Sunday circus will proceed around the roads of the locality, where the prime minister will be doing house visits and stopping at stationeries selling newspapers, in a bid to soften hostile stories on the newsstands by giving his personal flavour directly to the citizens.
The pilgrimage will also see Gonzi visit Birkirkara, one of the few localities in which Alternattiva Demokratika gave the PN a run for their money by electing a councillor back in 2003.
Gonzi also intends to visit band clubs, shops and village squares, although his functionaries have a delicate job of sifting the disgruntled Nationalists from the radically estranged and angry people who may be potentially embarrassing in front of Super One cameras.
“It’s back to campaign mode,” another PN source said, hinting at the upcoming local elections in March next year.
The village trips are expected to end with Gonzi giving a brief statement to the media, similar to the campaign used last year in the run up to the European Parliament elections.
karl@newsworksltd.com
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