“Politics is about the distribution of wealth in a manner that the majority can live with, social justice or as much of it as the traffic will allow.”Perhaps it might have done him some good to try and amend the content of whatever A-Level study guide he is copying this stuff out of when he came to applying it to the Maltese context. Is it so surprising that AD are ignored when its ideological architect relies on such inappropriate economic constructs as the hackneyed neo-liberal vs. controlled economy dichotomy?:
“In the traditional oversimplification, the Right insists on economic growth relying on a trickledown effect to achieve social peace while the Left insists on jobs to ensure the basic dignity of the greatest number.”Understandably, Vassallo might be nervous to call them as he sees them, as anybody who has eyes to see can. This is why he trots out the old capitalism nag instead of criticising the clientelistic rot that has truly lain in the very heart of Maltese politics for time immemorial. The Boissevan classic “Saints and Fireworks” published as long ago as 1965, perversely sold in the airport, should be a starting point of reference for students of political unaccountability in Malta. Of course, Vassallo has read that book and doubtless is infinitely more familiar with its contents than I am, but you wouldn’t know to read his portentous warnings about “political fragmentation on the right … nostalgia for fascism at one extreme and complete alienation from politics at the other”. By nostalgia for fascism I presume he means the Lowell crew of knuckle-dragging inbreeds. This is misguided as the two factors he cites are not so distinct from one another. The truth is that there are large numbers of Maltese people who would be fascists if they either knew what it was or could be bothered to. Luckily, political disaffection and Spanish practices have undercut the propensity for such worrisome proclivities among the homo Melitensis. Incidentally, this term, one that someone else must have coined already, is begging to be converted into an abbreviated form, in the style of sovok, a Russian term that this highly readable article explains in some detail.
Yet in a spectacularly early bit of electoral campaigning Vassallo has the temerity to pontificate on the political opportunism of the mainstream political parties:
“Which bogeyman will they conjure next time around? Or will it be an overdose of fabrications, spin, threats and promises to baffle everybody and drive us dizzy towards the "safe" option of doing what we have always done?”As members of AD contemplate seeking fame, if not fortune, on shores foreign, Vassallo is on a whole different planet, where it “is dawning on more and more people that Green opposition to some developments is an expression of Green economics, that there is a need to articulate its principles and to make its rules known and accepted. None of it is utopian, all of it is perfectly rational”. Thankfully, he has the moderate sense not to expect “the whole country to support [AD] overnight”. No, that would be silly.
It would be remiss to overlook quite how it is that AD is proposing to inculcate its views in the minds of the droves of fishwives and yobbish louts that have infested the Maltese islands:
“The change we bring about is the internalisation of our values. It cannot be achieved by imposition, by political muscle but only by persuasion breeding conviction, not by slogans and certainly not by fear. It is altogether new and its method must also be different.”For heaven’s sake, how far can he really believe his weekly column in The Times is going towards “breeding conviction”? Frankly, the only internalisation that’s going to help Vassallo’s political fate is that of cash into peoples’ pockets.
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