Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1068299
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 JANUARY 2019 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Understatements of the year... I'LL say one thing about the year that has just begun: it sure is ambitious. Barely four days old, and already 2019 is attempting to set a whole new world record for media understatement. These, for example, are a few snippets from news stories that have appeared locally (you'll never guess about what) since 1st January: "The Nationalist Party appears to be split on after the domestic abuse allega- tions targeting Dr Delia were spread on social media…" "…the situation in the party is teetering on the brink of civil war…' "Delia is currently facing friction within the Nationalist party…" "Appears to be split", you say? Do you mean to imply that there is a vague, in- distinct possibility of some kind of teenie-weenie little disagreement going on in that party right now? Gee, who would have ever guessed… And "teetering on the brink of civil war"? ''Facing fric- tion"? I mean… thank God we have a free, independent press to inform us of such things. Otherwise, how on earth would we ever get to know that the Opposition party is currently experiencing… ooh, let's just say 'a minor spot of bother', and leave it at that? But still, let's give them a little credit for getting at least their perceptions right. Yes, indeed: the PN does 'appear' to be split… in the same way as the sky 'appears' to be blue, or gravity 'appears' to some- how make things fall to the ground. In fact, the situation in that party is beginning to remind me of the situation in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq (only with real instead of imaginary 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'). Funny, though, how the local media seems to think the PN is less divided than it actually is… seeing as how all the leaks that they themselves are busy publishing, all came from the various factions of disgruntled Nationalists – let me repeat that part: Nationalists: i.e., from within the same party – all hell-bent on politically annihilating their own leader. Wouldn't you say that cre- ates a remote outward per- ception of a possible 'split'? As does the sudden explosion of social media commentary from exponents of all the PN's various factions, either to de- fend or harangue the 'embat- tled' Adrian Delia… in other words, all taking up clear (and conflicting) positions in an ongoing, no-holds-barred war for Delia's successions: a war for which the battle-lines have long been drawn, and which incidentally is already at quite an advance stage? I'm beginning to ask myself what it's going to take, exact- ly, for certain people to finally wrap their heads around the true extent of the PN's ghast- ly, brutal self-evisceration. Drive-by shootings, perhaps? (Don't laugh: it's happened before). Or how about Adrian Delia's bloodied, decapitated head impaled upon a spike above the Stamperija? Wait, I know: a giant mush- room cloud rising above Pi- eta'. Yes, that would certainly hammer home the reality of the situation once and for all. (Only thing is, we'd all be vaporized in around 2.3 nanoseconds… so it would be a short-lived, if rather belated, 'moment of truth'.) Seriously, though. How drastic does the situation have to become, before we pro- gress from talking about the 'perception' of that reality, to acknowledging that it actually exists? Which naturally brings me to the 'civil war' part. 'Teeter- ing on the brink', my eye. The PN might have been 'teeter- ing on the brink of a civil war' in the Lawrence Gonzi-John Dalli leadership race in 2004, for instance. Or during the backbencher revolt that fol- lowed. But since then, the party took (sorry, l 'seems to have taken') a great stride forward… going from 'teeter- ing', to 'keeling', to 'waving its arms around in sudden panic', to 'losing its footing and hurtling over the edge with an echoing shriek'. The time for 'teetering', I would say, is long past… OK, by this stage you might be itching to point out that I, too, am stating the obvious… and laying on the sarcasm a little thick, too. And yes, I may well be overlabouring the point. But I'm not joking or exag- gerating when I say that I honestly don't understand what the Maltese media (or sections thereof, at any rate: the ones I have in mind right now are Lovin' Malta and The Times) are actually playing at here. Why do they try and mini- mize the actuality of a story that they broke themselves… and which is also shaping up to be the great newsmaker of "Appears to be split", you say? Do you mean to imply that there is a vague, indistinct possibility of some kind of teenie- weenie little disagreement going on in that party right now? Gee, who would have ever guessed… One thing that makes this a truly unprecedented situation is that all the concerted media and cyber-attacks perpetrated upon Adrian Delia – and I imagine soon also upon his supporters within the party, and vice versa – are being perpetrated by other Nationalists