It’s 14 years since the slap. One fine summer evening in 2006, Beppe Fenech Adami and Charles ‘Ċaqnu’ Polidano were breaking bread at one of Polidano’s places in St Julian’s. The dining was fine, until columnist Claire Bonello passed by and told off Fenech Adami: “So now you’re eating with a baruni”.
To cut a long story short, Ċaqnu took offence, followed Bonello out of the restaurant, and slapped her across the face.
That’s two slaps, then. At the time, you could hardly look at anything in Malta that didn’t have ‘Polidano’ written all over it. That of Fenech Adami, too, was not quite an obscure name. Bonello’s was a slap in the face of the cosy relationship between politics and big money.
Then, as now, I’m sure there were all manner of barunijiet. The ones that really made the news and fired the popular imagination, however, were the Ċaqnu-type big developers. By which I mean people from working-class backgrounds who had managed, by dint of hard work, intelligence and a little help from friends of friends, to make millions.
If anything, Bonello got her target right. The word ‘barunijiet’ (barons) had been coined by Alfred Sant back in the 1990s to describe corruption at the highest level. What made it doubly effective was the irony: that the barunijiet were the very antithesis of baronial pedigree did not stop them from effectively lording it over the country.
Fourteen years and one moviment later, the Ċaqnu types have found themselves a tad eclipsed. They’re still busy making hay by the wain, of course, but only as part of a cast. The man himself seems to have retired to his neo-neoclassical pile in Luqa. These days, he only makes the news when one of his tigers mauls a visitor or one of his trucks accidentally tips rubble into a valley.
No matter, because there is no shortage of replacements. They come with far fancier names, if not quite nicknames. ‘Ċaqnu’ is not just a nickname: it’s a public one, with all the class and political implications of that. An equivalent for an Apap Bologna or a Zammit Tabona or a Gasan is unthinkable. While they might have nicknames, they would be known only to friends, as they say.
You have to give it to New Labour, their barunijiet are the real deal. Joseph Muscat built a hegemony alright, except it’s one in which some hegemonise more than others. That those some are also super posh is the mother of all ironies: this is, after all, the partit tal-ħaddiema.
Muscat was wise enough to realise that the only way money and privilege can grow old is by adapting to change. I’ll spare you the Lampedusa quote, which overuse has made dull. Point is, the hyperwealthy and hyperprivileged also tend to be hyperadaptable.
You have to give it to New Labour, their barunijiet are the real deal- Mark Anthony Falzon
If you’re the Muscat type, that’s to your advantage. Perhaps the idea of an upgrade to the barunijiet came to him when he was researching his brown-nosed book about Alfred Sant in 1996.
That the real barunijiet extended their enthusiastic cooperation is now becoming clear. To move to Ħamrun and be mortified is far better than to be poor.
It might also explain why the Labour coffers are so full. The question to ask is where it leaves the rest of us.
Entertained, for starters, as we watch Paul Apap Bologna and Mark Gasan do somersaults in court and Michael Zammit Tabona compare Angela Merkel to Hitler.
It leaves us somewhat perplexed, too. A small bunch of Labourite socialist old-timers are privately disgusted. They can hardly believe that the party whose theoretical mission is to unsettle hyperprivilege has made it its actual mission to court that very thing.
Many more Labourites actually sympathise with Joseph Muscat. As they see it, he was seduced by the real barunijiet, only to be betrayed – possibly because those types can never be trusted anyway.
It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the seduction was entirely mutual. Things are more colourful on the other side of the fence. Normally, real or imagined class solidarity would cocoon the Gasans and the Apap Bolognas.
Not this time, however. No wonder they’re mortified: they are quite under attack, on turf that is usually eminently forgiving.
Part of it is a sense of betrayal. The line is fine between adaptation and betrayal, and many think it has been crossed. The main reason, however, is the outcome of that betrayal. Forget the missing hundreds of millions. The reason why so many are outraged is because, as Caroline Muscat rightly wrote the other day, Electrogas is “the deal that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia”.
Daphne herself often wrote that he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon. In this case it’s a meal between equals, and certainly no long spoons. Boy do they deserve a slap.