I.M. Beck - quote unquote

By the time you read this, the PM may have exercised his prerogative and called the election. The idea mooted with the S&H, whose plans for various photoshoots will have been pretty well ruined if Dr Lawrence Gonzi has been inconsiderate enough to blow his whistle without consulting us, was that I would write an alternative column, and rely on the skill of my editors to re-jig the column.

On the other hand, though, and on reflection (remember when Dr Alfred Sant used to reflect on everything all the time, you'd think he'd become a mirror) it struck me that this introductory bit would serve pretty well to cover the bases.

After all, depending on how you look at it, the campaign's been on for many months now, though the real confirmation came last Sunday when, apparently, I was given an honourable mention (more precisely, a number of mentions) by the chip-wrapper paramount among chip-wrappers, KullĦadd. The tactic of trying to intimidate anyone with an opinion that is not four-square with what the MLP thinks is its own opinion at any given moment (which is not necessarily going to be the same next week) was one that had been tried and tested over many years, though entirely without even a soupcon of success, and the fact that it may be starting again demonstrates that the race is really on.

That being as it may be, if the race is on, then so be it - if the PM, however, has decided to keep all those people who are gasping for it gasping a few days or weeks longer, than let that also be so.

Black kettle

What an unbridled nerve! What sheer opportunism! What amazing hubris!

It is of that medical person of whom I discourse, the one who did the nip'n'tuck job on Dr Alfred Sant. You will have read, by now (unless you've been living under a rock) and seen on YouTube, if the Nationalists have been even slightly savvy, Mr Anthony Zammit's rant last week during the MLP annual conference.

I hardly know where to start, to be honest. About which disquieting aspect of his performance shall I comment first, I wonder? Shall I muse out loud on the ill-judged comparison between Dr Sant's recent tribulations and Dr Eddie Fenech Adami's a few years ago?

Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about matters medical knows that some things require the patient to be advised to seek help overseas, others can be dealt with here. This is no reflection on the medical profession but simply a reality that reflects, among other things, the size of the country.

But no, for Mr Zammit, the advice given to Dr Fenech Adami by his colleague, the one who helped him on Dr Sant, to boot, and the fact that Dr Fenech Adami took it, is evidence of a lack of confidence in Maltese doctors. Cheap shot, doc, really cheap shot.

Then there's the unashamed opportunism of the whole thing. Most people have avoided using Dr Sant's medical condition for political purposes but this propaganda genius thought it would be a good idea to draw some sort of parallel between Dr Sant's reported recovery and the MLP's prospects, such as they are, in the upcoming elections.

By doing this, he's dragged Dr Sant's illness squarely into the political arena and now no one can be blamed for using it to try to gain political points. After all, if one candidate can say Dr Sant's OK and fit to lead the country, another one can say the opposite now.

That must have made the spin-meisters down Crystal Palace way squirm and then some - if Mr Zammit's perform­­ances at the press conferences reporting on Dr Sant's illness smacked of carefully-planned event management, this one demonstrated that when candidates are left to their own devices they have an amazing tendency to insert their size nines into their mouths.

And to make things worse, this isn't a common or garden candidate riding vicariously on the skills of a medical team, it's a member of that same team cashing in on his own skill to make political and professional noises about how much he and the cat's whiskers are pretty much identical.

And then he has the nerve to screech about "professional ethics", for heaven's sake.

What vision

The Secretary of State for Health of the UK, whose own record in the business of providing health care in his home country is hardly enviable (not that his grasp of the ethical considerations related to accepting donations is enviable, either), deigned to come among us last week to let it be known to us poor ex-colonials that, in his considered opinion, the MLP is the only party fit to lead Malta in the future.

Leaving aside the point that if he'd come here and said something on those lines back when Labour were in power (not the last time, when they lost power because of a yacht marina, of all things, the time before that, when they had clung on to power like grim death) he'd have been arrested and kicked out of the country in short order, on what does the dear fellow base his perspicacious opinion?

I have this sneaking suspicion that Her Majesty's Foreign Office didn't deliver one of their considered opinions to him, because not even the FO can be short-sighted enough to ignore the fact that the Nationalist government has been a pretty darn successful one. At best, Dr Sant's government-in-waiting can be perceived as a possible alternative, though precisely whom he's going to use to pack his Cabinet is something on which I'd invite you to speculate.

So it stands to reason that the exalted gentleman must have been fed the relevant facts, and I use the word "facts" in the widest of all possible wide senses, by the people who were acting as his minders while he was gracing us with his sublime presence.

Coup question

You'll have noticed a number of epistles between Mr Evarist Saliba and a few chaps (whose penchant to stand up for the MLP is not distinguished by its absence) debating whether in 1987 there wasn't a sense of apprehension abroad in this fair land that there might be an attempt by forces sympathetic to the MLP (which by all predictions were about to be swept from power) to reverse this expression of the electorate's wishes.

And, yes, that was a purposely convoluted sentence, designed to annoy people who are annoyed by such things.

Apparently, it had been reported at the time by the Corriere della Sera that there were fears of a coup d'état between voting and result-declaration back then. The MLP apologists took some exception to Mr Saliba's reporting of this report in his book, apparently. For what it's worth, I was quite heavily involved in the electoral process at the time and I can confirm that, yes, there were such fears. And from conversations I have had since then I can confirm that these fears should not, necessarily, be dismissed as baseless.

This is not to say that the couple of paragraphs above should be taken as veiled finger-pointing at anyone in particular who was trying to maintain, or aspired to remain in, or thought he could filch, power. Far from it. The fact remains, though, there really were fears that this could happen.

Speaking for myself, when I left home to go up to Ħal Far to take part in the counting process, I did so wondering whether I would be seeing my then two-year-old again. Call me paranoid, call me maudlin, call me what you like (and KullĦadd no doubt will) but some things you don't forget, and this is one of them.

Don't forget, while you're deciding what to call me, this was an era when areas of Malta were no-go to Nationalists, when shootings, beatings, frame-ups and illegal arrests were not uncommon and when certain elements of the police were not exactly - how should one put this? - champions of the democratic process.

Yes, I am harking back to the past but it's a past which formed me and my country, for better or for worse.

Food for it

This week I'm unable, due to an undertaking given to a lady (and the word is not being used with tongue too much in cheek) that I'd forebear from writing, to tell you too much about the superb meal to which I was treated last Tuesday.

So I'll just leave you with a taste, hoping that I'll remember to give you the main course next week.

We had a very good meal for the mind, though, on Saturday, when we went to the concert given at the MCC by the National Philharmonic Orchestra (the National Orchestra as was).

Just to add few more notes to KullĦadd's limited lexicon of pejoratives in my regard, let me be the first to admit that I am quite a pleb in matters cultural but, take it from me, when they're next putting on a show, you've got to attend.