BEMUSED

The MLP leadership contest is becoming stranger by the minute. I've always wondered about the precise function of the Board of Vigiliance, or whatever neo-Stalinist title is given to the commissariat that seems charged with the task of keeping the Socialist ideal pure. Now I'm even more perplexed.

It seems that their reason for being is to give people like me, scurrilous proto-Nationalist scribblers that we are, even more reason to dump sarcasm all over the noble pates of the workers' heroes.

What in the name of all that's beautiful did these lads think they were about?

First they slapped a gag-order onto Leadership candidates, prompting the reaction that they were doing this in order to kick George Abela's bid even further into touch. Then they reversed the gag-order, presumably because all the candidates made it pretty darn clear that they thought that the notion was ludicrous. What the Thought Police will do about Abela's blatant defiance of their decree is not yet known, though it will be an interesting conundrum for them to sort out.

Questions arise, though, even if the ban is no longer in effect.

The first such question is, what passes for brains in the Vigiliance Board context?

OK, fine, it may be what the party machine wants for Abela to be muzzled, but did it happen to cross anyone's mind that by shutting him up, all the others would be silenced too? This might not have been such a bad thing for them, since the more they say the less people are going to think they're leadership material (look what happened to Sant as the electoral campaign trundled on, after all) If Joseph Muscat were to clam up for a bit, for instance, he might do himself a power of good.

Telling us all what a total genius he is, and how he started planning Malta's economic recovery while still languishing in the amniotic fluid, is starting to wear a bit thin.

The second question is, who is calling the shots? It's pretty obvious that Jason Micallef doesn't want to have to deal with the idea of George Abela being Leader, so he's probably putting his inconsiderable weight into preventing this. The current owners of l-orizzont and It-Torca are also not exactly enamoured of the idea, so they wouldn't look too favourably on Abela's fair visage adorning their papers.

Put these two strands into the same argument and you have a strong case for trying to shut off the rest of the media insofar as Dr Abela is concerned, giving us outsiders an idea as to who might have put the pressure onto the Board to issue its edict.

But then the third question raises its ugly head: who countermanded the instruction and why? After all, is it credible that a cog in the party machine acted on its own motion and then realised that it had dropped a clanger of epic proportions?

All on its own, without any input? I don't think so, though of course, I might be wrong. Or is it more believable that the Board was given its course of action on a plate by someone who got it wrong and then had to eat humble pie? You might ask, who is the twit who gauged the thing so wrong?

Again, far be it from me to point fingers, but give the question some thought. Who thinks he knows it all, to the extent that he can make up policy as he goes along?

Who back-tracks and side-tracks and pulls u-turns with such gay abandon that you'd think he was the intellectual off-spring of a roller-coaster designer?

Presumably, and probably, it would prove to be pretty precocious of me, predicating pretentiousness, to propose the proposition that preparing and proposing these predominantly preposterous propositions was the work of a preponderantly pretentious promoter of policies that have been consistently proved wrong and voted against no less than four times, but hey, I'm morally convinced I have a case to prosecute.

In other words, one interpretation of all of this is that Sant thought Abela should be muzzled. He told Micallef to do it. Micallef failed to think it through and told the Board to do it. The Board did it. The consequences were what we know they were. The Board reversed.

It's only one intepretation and it might be fanciful, but flights of fancy are the stuff of politics.

FOLLOWING ON

I got a call just as I was about to settle in to bash out this edition of Le Blog.

It was from someone who read my Saturday column and thought it would be appropriate for me to be congratulated for my piece on that Teutonic hash-slinger, the one who the MTA, in its sublime wisdom, has appointed to represent us as our Food Ambassador.

My caller has had some experience of the gentleman and my impression of his appropriateness for the position apparently struck a chord. I was not wrong, according to my caller, the MTA had cooked up a pot of messuage. This phrase, while sounding good, is actually inverted for effect, so you needn't comment on my failure to get it right.

I was also reminded that there were plenty of others who I could have mentioned, too, as candidates for honourable inclusion in the roll of our Corps Diplomatique Culinaire. Julian Sammut of Rubino fame, young Diacono at Guzeppi, the eponymous Zeri, Gloria Mizzi, the doyenne of them all when it comes to the Maltese kitchen, and Victor, formely of Mange Tout spring to mind, and there are others.

A few comments would help compile a decent list, so get to it.