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What should one make of a political executive who thinks charisma is something that could be lurking behind the facade of a boring 58-year old politician and that it could be brought out to the surface, if only this man learns how to crack jokes in public – the same way he does in private?
This is the most telling comment that crossed my mind after reading the interview Herman Grech made to MLP general secretary, Jason Micallef, published last Monday in The Times.
The interview is rich in other incredible examples of foolhardiness and non sequiturs, but this takes the cake because it shows that the notion of charisma as a political tool is beyond Jason’s range of thought.
Others might have thought that Jason’s quaint ideas about what political u-turns are about deserve first prize. I admit that in this case an ‘honorary mention’ would be in order!
Blithely ignoring the way the MLP administrative machine sold the party’s latest u-turn – on the EU constitution issue – to its own General Conference delegates, Jason wants us to believe that it is just these 900 or so delegates who on their own take decisions that any normal person with a pinch of common sense cannot but describe as u-turns. He must think we are all a bunch of morons.
He even had the gall to lecture his interviewer on the importance of basic principles to the Malta Labour Party. The decision that Malta joins the EU was taken by the electorate in an election and respect of the people’s choice is a matter of principle. Simple, really! Were it not for Alfred Sant’s faux pas of making his personal opposition to Malta’s EU membership a matter of principle that went against what the MLP believed and stands for. Just as he did in the case of VAT. The problem is that in opposing both the introduction of VAT and EU membership, Alfred Sant thought he would be putting across a stronger message if he translated the issues into matters of principle, which they were certainly not. When he lost both battles, Alfred Sant had no option but to appear as if he was recanting on sacred principles. So much for Sant’s strategies, that seem to be always putting him in awkward corners. This, apparently, is also beyond Jason’s horizons!
Jason Micallef’s interview is also remarkable because of the amazing way he stonewalled every time the interviewer touched on the issue of disagreements within the MLP, dismissing them as internal party matters that the general public has no business to know about. Asked whether all the leaks of what’s going on behind the closed doors of the MLP’s headquarters, Jason just nonchalantly replied: ‘I don’t want to ignore your question but where internal leadership issues are concerned, they should remain internal.’ The mayor’s PRO in the American TV sitcom ‘Spin City’ couldn’t have said it any better!
Yet, there is no one in this country who really believes that the MLP’s internal tensions should not be in the public domain. After all, the MLP, as Jason himself has optimistically prophesised, will soon be the party in Government. Some would therefore say his stance smacks of arrogance, but Jason must have thought it too risky to discuss the state of the MLP’s dirty linen in a newspaper interview. So Jason cleverly avoided one pitfall by diving straight into another!
In what must have been his most telling gaffe in the interview, Jason then alleged that ‘one of the first things Alfred Sant did when he was elected leader was to set up a board of vigilance and discipline.’ This is a serious case of amnesia.
The Vigilance and Discipline Board was set up in the MLP much before Alfred Sant was elected leader, as Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff cannot but confirm! Indeed, in what was a historic dirty trick, the alleged goings on within this Board were abused by someone – presumably in the Alfred Sant camp – to undermine Lino Spiteri’s leadership bid.
Incidentally, or not so incidentally, under Alfred Sant’s leadership the original raison d’être of this board has been distorted and it has become a convenient channel that leads to the dumping of anyone who publicly dares criticise or disagree with the beloved leader.
Of course, Jason’s noble efforts to depict Alfred Sant as sitting on the moral high ground to the extent that the setting up of the Vigilance and Discipline Board was (falsely) depicted as having been set up under his leadership was an admirable effort at putting his idol in a better light than he deserves. As John K. Galbraith once said, nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory!
What does one make of Jason Micallef after going through this interview? One cannot help asking: where’s the beef? Consistently I have this nagging feeling that Jason is just a smiling face, covering up a dearth of substance: a grin without any grit.
Jason comes across as someone with the same characteristics of those policy documents that the MLP has been dishing out regularly under Alfred Sant’s leadership: a thin veneer of platitudes behind which frankly there are neither any new ideas nor any clear political direction. Considered from this perspective, the MLP delegates could not have chosen a better man – no doubt without realising it – to be the party’s Chief Executive Officer in its thirteenth year under Alfred Sant’s lacklustre leadership.
micfal@maltanet.net
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