‘Clyding’

Clyde Puli is a Nationalist Member of Parliament and the public relations officer to the Foundation for Medical Services, or rather… the ‘Foundation that has championed the longest and most expensive hospital financed from the taxes of the impatient middle classes and that is to be completed on Dr Gonzi’s birthday’. Phew!
On Saturday, when the PN was facing yet another humiliating defeat, Mr Puli was rudely suggesting to NET viewers that the electorate had not appreciated the improved financial ratings from Moody’s and the latest news about the ‘Smart’ internet city.
In politics, humility is a rare occurrence. With Puli, it is completely missing. Someone should have dragged the man by his waistcoat and explained to him that eating humble pie on such a delicate occasion is not such an awful idea. Little does he know that the middle class folk who do not have the advantage of having a parliamentarian’s and Foundation for Medical Services PRO’s salary will only understand what the cockles he is trying to say when they see an improvement in their lives and purchasing power.
Mr Puli can, with little effort, leave an impression on the Qormi gentry that support him, but when it comes to reaching out to middle of the road folk, his contribution is Fantozzi-like. Just because he has a well-trimmed goatee and a waistcoat does not mean he should expect his arrogance to be embraced and his own way of playing down the local council results to be acceptable.
Mr Puli is the kind of guy you do not want around at a funeral. When everyone is kind of sombre, pensive, humbled and gloomy, Mr Puli comes up with the silliest statement to put all of us to shame.
Mr Puli is not a professional slapstick comedian. He is a politician who acts as a perfect repellent to the Nationalist, middle class voter from getting a wee bit closer to the PN.
If the Nationalists believe that Labour are better off if they do away with Alfred Sant, I believe the Nationalists would do themselves wonders if they exported Puli to the Bollywood magnates, to act in one of those films where his waistcoats would surely be welcome.
At least, the PM has had enough sense not to appoint him as a junior minister. But you can never say. I surmise however that he could do a better job than junior minister Frans Agius, the man responsible for Malta’s tasty cabbages and turnips.

The other Puli-like utterance was the one from Austin Sammut, the former PBS head appointed by Louis Galea, and who fell out of favour with Austin Gatt. He is a columnist who has an unbridled sympathy for the Nationalist party. Nothing wrong with that, I should believe.
But taking a better look at the some of his comments as copied to The Times last Monday, one can’t help but feel annoyed and detached from whatever this man aspires to represent.
“We used to call Zejtun a Republic,” he bemoans… he was writing about the Qui-Si-Sana residents, apparently feeling the need to compare Zejtun to the Sliema residents for their grassroots opposition to the commercialisation of Tigné.
There is only one simple question to ask Austin Sammut: if he were a resident at Qui-Si-Sana, what would he have to say? The morning after, Sammut was on NET TV speaking of a not-very-serious defeat, and of the positive things the people were not appreciating. It only showed the great divide between people like Austin Sammut, and normal people who do not see things the same he sees them.
Normal people are those who have salaries of some Lm5,000 or Lm6,000 and will never see an EU tender in their lifetime. They do not know what it means to eat out for lunch at noon, travel club class for the hell of it, and they do not have swimming pools and patios to frolic about inside their homes.
The Qui-si-Sana residents are normal kind of residents. They have apartments, and have every right to speak up. They are irritated about being treated like second class citizens. They protested with their constitutional right, the vote.
In 1986, many of them joined hundreds in a protest in Zejtun. There they protested peacefully, only to be gassed and fired on by a select few from Zejtun. They fought tyranny, only to rediscover it in flawed government policy and ministerial arrogance. They relived it in the silly, partisan writings of Austin Sammut.

What a brainwave: comparing the Nationalist Party to a vintage car. It is exactly what Joe Saliba did when interviewed on Radio 101. Missing from the interview was the well dressed host Karl Stagna Navarra, who is suspended from his duties at Media.Link for reasons known to everyone but the public.
Mr Saliba is not the most gifted individual for cooking up metaphors. Vintage cars are sought after items but more often than not, they are garaged, mothballed or museum pieces. If he had said that the Nationalist Party is a Ferrari in need of a paint job, he would have been the wittiest secretary-general in the western world. But he did not.
The secretary-general, who feels no great responsibility for the abysmal showing in the last four elections, went a step further and as an example quoted what goes on in local council elections in other countries. Citing Germany as one of the examples, he continued to confirm my conviction that Saliba either doesn’t know that the German socialists lost in the local councils and the national elections as well, or that he is short of examples.
I do understand that the radio listeners in talk shows at Radio 101 share the intellectual propensity as those who tune in to Super One, so we should not be too distressed to learn that some of the people who deliver speeches on these radios pay little attention to detail.
The reality is that the Nationalist party made a mess of these elections. And the reaction to this was inevitable: blame it on the surcharge and the pensions.
Bollocks, Mr Prime Minister. That is not the reason why people did not vote for you.
Many people will talk about campaign strategy. What is important is that our quality of life and the country we live in improves and does not regress. In his press conference, Mr Prime Minister was generally unrepentant. He stood by Ta’ Cenc, the development at Qui-Si-Sana and Sant Antnin. He even talked about wardens being a reason for the low turnout and the swing. He stood by his secretary-general, his campaign and everything else.
He was close to blaming the people for not understanding his government’s good work. I am sure he believes this is the main problem. It is understandable, but would it not have been better if he had stated that he would look into the issues that are concerning the public to establish whether public sentiment was correct or misguided?
There are a few good men surrounding the PM, where with the departure of Alan Camilleri from his secretariat, the office of the Prime Minister has become infinitesimally more media–friendly. Mr Camilleri’s communications skills, which are as enviable as Clyde Puli’s, are now transferred to the euro-changeover committee, a committee that needs all the help it can get.
Camilleri was the most unfriendly PRO that I have ever known, and today he has a gargantuan task ahead of him. He may have some talent I do not see, but to me his appointment is similar to having Bin Laden promote the wonderbra.

If Dr Gonzi wishes to win back the middle classes he must start understanding their pains and get the party closer to its roots, and bridge out to those he has ostracised and sent off to the Gulags.
In the last executive meeting for the PN, Gonzi talked of the way he has turned the country around. True, he embarked on reforms that are positive. But he has left far too much in the hands of civil servants and the boys at Pietà.
The Prime Minister cannot play any longer on the emotional trump card. Gone are the days when people voted for Eddie Fenech Adami, for just being the man he was. Gonzi needs to take a calmer look at what is creating this bad feeling among his natural and traditional electorate and react humbly and quickly.
Incompetent ministers, empty promises, blown up references to the economic crisis, doing nothing about meritocracy, abetting pressure on the middle class, making government smaller and a general lack of vision are in my (far from a humble) view of the main concerns of that would-be natural electorate.
Will he listen? Only God knows.

Those of you who share the same ghastly memories of the eighties, will remember that in the good old days of Dom Mintoff, the Nationalist press raised hell when St Angelo was transformed into a hotel complex with a swimming pool.
On Thursday, the Planning Authority sanctioned the building of a health spa at Fort St Angelo. This is the idyllic home to one lonely celibate Chevalier de Malte, the environs are soon to become a health spa. The Knights of St John were supposed to restore St Angelo, but they fell very short from what we expected them to do in the first place.
MEPA members voted unanimously for the health spa. If this had been 1985, they would have been called all kinds of names by the PN press. But this is 2006, the new age where politics is done differently, where politicians do not come down from their pedestal, where Qui-Si-Sana residents are likened to the Republic of Zejtun, where crazy and indigestible economic stats appear like rabbits out of a hat, where our values are determined by how much we accept the system and become part of the networks.
This is Malta, today.

sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt