Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1122280
24 OPINION maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 MAY 2019 Raphael Vassallo Political battles are not won by throwing milkshake ELECTION weekends are a crap time to be in the newspaper business. Take the so-called 'day of reflec- tion' last Friday, for instance. There is supposed to be a law preventing 'the media' from discussing politi- cal/electoral/campaign issues on the eve of an election. But, like so many other laws in our statute books, it was drawn up at a time when 'the media' meant something somewhat slightly… different. Basically, it meant only newspapers, radio, TV (which was still a novelty, back then) and… um… 'Rediffusion'. Younger readers will probably have to google that last word. Even I – who have a vague childhood memory of a Rediffusion set crackling away in the background… in what feels like another galaxy, long ago, etc. – felt obliged to look it up, to make sure I at least spell it correctly. For make no mistake: the media landscape has changed since the early 1960s, when that law was drafted. Rediffusion is no more. Even tel- evision has been superseded as the medium of choice for popular debate. Thirty years after 'video killed the radio star', social media networks have killed video. It is all online now: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. But – big surprise coming up – while the media landscape has been transformed beyond recognition, the laws supposedly regulating it have remained virtually unchanged. So, on Friday, print editions of daily newspa- pers could not report on any mat- ters pertaining to the following day's election. Television and radio stations could not feature political develop- ments (which, I need hardly add, carry on regardless of media blackout laws) in their news bulletins. And yet, while newspapers and broadcast services were robbed of their main raison d'etre for the space of 24 hours… all the political billboards remained firmly in place: trumpeting out their highly politi- cal messages, despite being techni- cally part of the broader definition of 'mass media' in the 21st century. Paid political adverts continued popping up all over the social media networks throughout the 'day of reflection'… and (though I can't confirm this, as I am writing on Friday) I suspect they will carry on, with impunity, even on voting day. As for 'political commentary', in the wider sense… that continued unabated for every second of those 24 hours. Just not in the papers or on TV. Effectively, then, this 'day of reflection' succeeded only in muzzling the so-called 'mainstream media' (which, it must be said, is not even all that 'mainstream' anymore). We have ended up with an unenforceable law that is applicable only to a tiny fraction of what passes for 'the media' today… with another law – the law of the jungle – for everyone else. But election weekends are crap for other reasons, too. By the time you read this, the first results will prob- ably already have started coming in. We will probably already know (or be able to anticipate) how many of those six seats were won, and by whom; how the national vote breaks down along party lines; who the winners and losers were, by how much, and all the rest of it. And that's just Malta. This being a 'European election' – and perhaps we need to be reminded of that, as 'Eu- rope' was almost nowhere to be seen throughout this campaign – there is also the question of which Europe political formations/groupings will emerge triumphant or strengthened; and which will take an umpteenth bashing from the electorate, and pos- sibly implode. None of that information is available to me as I write this article. So, tell you what: I'm going to base the rest of it on the following assumptions. One, that the Eurosceptics will register resounding successes across the EU (but nowhere more dramatically than the UK); two, that here in Malta, Imperium Europa will emerge as the third largest political party after Labour and the PN; and three, all the local discussion will be limited only to the implications for the two major parties, with all other considerations simply ignored. I may, of course, be proved wrong on all three of those assumptions (I'm especially hoping that about No.2). If so, I will happily throw a milkshake at myself before anyone else beats me to it. Why milkshake? Ah, because that particular dairy product has a large part to play in the formation of those assumptions. This week I was flab- bergasted to see so many people – people who seem to think they're 'anti-fascist', if you please – gleefully applauding, as a mob of balaclava- clad, milkshake-armed hooligans surrounded Nigel Farage's campaign bus, and kept that MEP candidate from stepping out and doing what he clearly had a right to do as a politi- cian: i.e., campaigning during the last week of an election. To me, that image was not just disgusting, but deeply disturbing. These are the people who are going to 'deliver us from fascism'? Sure look a lot like fascists to me. And given a choice between the politician try- ing to campaign, and the hoodlums trying to silence him… I'd be inclined to support the former (were it not for the fact that I disagree with Farage utterly on so many issues. But that is beside the point, for now.). Honestly, whoever thought this was a clever campaign strategy should be taken aside and gently informed that… well, 'thinking' is clearly not his or her strong point. There is noth- ing remotely clever about throwing milkshake at people. On the contrary: it is ugly, thuggish, intimidating, and – above all – stupid. It is also why I suspect that Nigel Farage's Brexit Party will perform even better than UK polls were predicting up until the beginning of last week… when it emerged that it had already overtaken both Labour and the Tories, to become Britain's Given a choice between the politician trying to campaign, and the hoodlums trying to silence him… I'd be inclined to support the former (were it not for the fact that I disagree with Farage utterly on so many issues)