Where's Wally?

As it is now customary to commence an argument by declaring what one is not – eg, “I am not racist, BUT…” – let me start this by saying that I have nothing whatsoever against PN secretary Chris Said.
BUT… he does occasionally say some remarkable things. This week, for instance, he launched the PN’s electoral campaign by arguing that… “you know where you stand” with the Nationalist Party.
Ouch! OK, let us – not without some difficulty – resist the temptation to actually complete Chris Said’s sentence on his behalf. (“Up to one’s eyeballs in ****” was one particularly helpful online suggestion; “In the queue to the Victory Kitchen” was another). Even if we go for the most obvious answer of them all (“on the fence, duh!”)… well, in that case, we’d actually be sitting, not standing.
No, indeed. Whichever way you look at it, that kind of statement is simply begging for trouble. It’s like that show on Cartoon Network (or wherever) called ‘Where’s Wally?’, where you have to scour through an impossibly overcrowded street scene looking for the wally that gives the show its name.
It’s not as though any of us actually gives a toss where Wally may be hiding… but once you’re shown that picture, and you know the little tyke is in there somewhere, you can’t help yourself. You just have to look for him…
So if you show us a picture of the political landscape and ask us to pinpoint exactly where the PN stands in it… well, sorry, Chris, but none of the answers will be very helpful to your party’s image at this particular moment in time. In fact, the question itself draws attention precisely to the one area where the Nationalist Party is currently at its weakest and most severely criticised: its apparent inability to take a stand on a growing number of issues, which now also includes the spring hunting referendum.
In fact, the words had barely escaped Said’s lips, when the Nationalist party leader suddenly popped out of the woodwork… just like that moment in the cartoon when the camera finally zooms to reveal where Wally’s been hiding all this time… and this is what Simon Busuttil popped out to say:
1)    The Nationalist Party’s parliamentary group will decide what stand it should take on the proposed referendum to abolish spring hunting only when the referendum is confirmed.
2)    The Nationalist Party has had a clear and consistent stand on spring hunting for the past nine years.
Ah, yes, makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? The PN’s position on spring hunting is so clear and consistent, that it has to wait until 40,000 signatures are verified by the Electoral Commission before it can decide what this clear and consistent position even is.
Busuttil however did not explain exactly why he has to wait for the referendum to be ‘confirmed’ before taking a stand. One can have an opinion in the matter with or without a referendum, you know. As a political party, one is actually expected to have opinions and policy positions on all sorts of issues, long before those issues are ever put to a vote. And in case no one’s noticed, there is also a European election campaign currently in full swing. People have a right to know where the parties stand on European issues before a European election, or so I would have thought. Ideally they should know these things before the campaign even begins, and certainly before polling day on 24 May.
But no! We shall have to wait until every last signature is verified, and every ID number cross-checked against a government database – a process that we are told can take up to three months – before the PN can even make up its mind. Not to worry, however. Chris Said assures us all ‘we know where we stand’ with the PN in this campaign. He just won’t tell us until after the election, that’s all.
Sticking to the PN for a minute, before moving onto the other Wally in the picture… we can extend this same state of ‘permanent fence-sitting’ to a wide variety of other issues, too. Let’s just pick one at random, and see how far we get. Beds in hospital corridors. Do we know where the PN stands on this issue? Not exactly an easy question to answer.
Last week, Busuttil claimed “it was unacceptable that patients are dying in hospital corridors” – alluding to a long-standing controversy which sees corridors at Mater Dei doubling up as impromptu wards in times of overcrowding (i.e, all the time). “A PN government was criticised for keeping patients on beds in corridors,” he added, “so one would expect that the situation should have improved and not worsened”.
You will note that Busuttil did not actually criticise the policy of keeping patients in corridors – how could he, when it was former Nationalist health Minister Joe Cassar who actually pioneered this practice (in his day it was called the ‘bed escalation policy’)? He only criticised the fact that some people have actually gone on to die in those corridor beds.
So let’s try and work out where the PN actually stands on this issue, shall we? It’s perfectly OK to place patients in corridors at the state hospital… so long as they remain alive for the duration of this temporary measure. In all other cases, it is a scandal.
Got that, patients? Kindly stop being so selfish and inconsiderate as to simply pop off in places where you’re supposed to stay alive. You could at least have the decency to wait until you’re transferred into a proper ward before kicking the bucket, you know… show some respect.
As for everyone else: carry on as normal…
Oh, and then there’s the small matter of drug decriminalisation. This one is interesting because it has been on the agenda for some time now: Sedqa has called for a discussion on the issue in 2010... giving the PN (and everyone else) plenty of time to put their thinking caps on and to come up with a policy of its own. Since then, the Justice Reform Commission has hinted at the ‘depenalisation’ of simple possession; the Labour government has promised a White Paper on the issue (which is a very good idea, by the way: if pot is ever decriminalised, papers might suddenly come in handy); the Green Party has for years been officially in favour of the decriminalisation of simple possession cases. In fact, just about everyone and his sniffer dog has told us where they stand on this issue. Everyone, that is, except the PN.
This was Busuttil’s last known position on the issue, as recorded by The Independent: “On the decriminalisation of drugs, Dr Busuttil insisted that the PN cannot be expected to have a position on the matter before the government presents its proposals…”
Well, this is precisely the trouble, isn’t it? It’s beginning to look as though the PN cannot be
expected to have a position on anything at all.
Over to Labour now – you didn’t think I’d leave them out, did you? – and here, the situation is almost exactly the same… except in complete reverse. Now, we are no longer looking for Wally. Now, Wally is looking for us. And we can run, but we can’t hide…
Sticking to the spring hunting referendum issue: these are the exact words uttered by the Prime Minister when confronted by a journalist on the issue this week: “My position, I’ve already said this, if a referendum takes place or not, one way or another (haga jew ohra), my position is that spring hunting remains…”
In case I am accused of lifting those words out of context, Joseph Muscat said those precise words after pointing out that:
1)    a petition was under way to collect signatures for a referendum, as mandated by the Constitution;
2)     the issue was causing damage to the country (though ‘we have to see, specifically, who is doing this damage’), and;
3)     this year has seen record levels of law enforcement in the hunting sector.
The video is available for viewing online. And it seems to indicate that Joseph Muscat (with whom we all know where we stand) personally believes spring hunting should continue… regardless of such trivialities as what the electorate thinks or how it votes.
I’d like to think I misunderstood him, but it sure as hell sounds to me like a threat to ignore the outcome of the referendum, if it doesn’t tally with his own personal views. If so, he won’t – let’s face it – be the first Labour leader to do something vaguely comparable.
But hey, let’s try and keep things positive. On the plus side: at least, we do know exactly where we stand with Labour on this issue. The minus? Some of us rather wish we didn’t know. Or at least, that Labour stood somewhere else entirely...