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A leak and a cartoon have turned the country’s political landscape into the backdrop of a veritable farce in the last week. The two reactions show clearly how far away both parties are from doing politics in a new way.
On the one hand the new chairman of the Malta Tourism Authority, Sam Mifsud, launches a witch hunt into the leak of his unsent letter to the Norwegian architect of the Brand Malta campaign.
Mr Mifsud should be aware that leaks and whistleblowers are part of the reality of life in the public domain. Rather than wisely taking this leak in one’s stride, as par for the course, Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech suggests an investigation into the leak, which is carried out in the most heavy-handed of manners with the appointed lawyer suggesting that the MTA board members could be subjected to telephone tapping and asking them to sign a declaration that they were not the source of the leak. They have since resigned.
Never mind that all governments leak information all the time as they churn unadulterated spin in their bid to seek friendly coverage; never mind that transparency demands the official disclosure of the kind of documents Mr Mifsud wants to keep secret; never mind that tourism is in a crisis and the whole branding campaign needs to be rethought or scrapped completely.
Board members even reported to the minister that they were told that the police have the powers to search journalists’ hard disks to track the source – something the minister immediately distanced himself from, wisely, as the absurdity of the whole investigation into this inconsequential leak became finally clear to him, prompting him to make a sudden u-turn and an order for all to focus on the bigger picture. The decision to investigate was in the first place absurd and it quickly turned into a liability, and an embarrassment for the minister and for the government.
On the other side of the coin, the Malta Labour Party reacts ferociously to a cartoon published on The Times, demanding an apology for ridiculing the party leader. In a reaction that instantly evokes the Muslims’ response to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, the Opposition party comes down like a ton of bricks demanding that the newspaper retracts its cartoon.
It is not the first time that political leaders betray their abysmal lack of sense of humour. When the prime minister demanded that NGOs distance themselves from the now famous ‘Vote George Get Lorry’ placard he betrayed just that. Labour took it a step further by coming out publicly against the cartoon through an official press statement, bemoaning the imagery that according to the party suggested Alfred Sant was “a cesspit”. One may argue it was in bad taste, but that is the nature of political cartoons.
The error of judgement is glaring. It is ludicrous for any party leader to react to a cartoon, and even worse to demand an apology, but what beggars belief is the Labour Party’s failure to understand that this is the worst way to engage with the press. There is nothing improper or unusual in a newspaper having an editorial or political bias, nothing extraordinary in a cartoon ridiculing public figures, after all that is their hallmark. Strip the cartoonist of the right to provoke and to satirise public figures, and the cartoon loses all its significance. The best cartoonists abroad are known for their incessant and cruel attacks on politicians, for their ruthless caricatures of public figures that are always potentially offensive.
And whoever complains, especially politicians, is depicted as a humourless, self-important person who just cannot realise that the people around him are laughing at him.
If the Labour party wishes to shed the past image of intolerance to the press it must be more savvy in its ways.
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