Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1393937
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 JULY 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Look! Up there, in the sky… IS it a bird? Is it a plane? Why, no… it's 'Super-Peregin', of course! Swooping down from the heavens above, to use his spe- cial, superhuman powers for the Greater Good of All Mankind (and just in time to single-hand- edly rescue Maltese democracy from the jaws of dictatorship, too! All together now: 'Hooray!') Hmmm. I don't know: are all millennials quite as over-enthu- siastic as that, I wonder? Or are we dealing with an exceptional specimen here…? But in case you were wonder- ing: I'm talking about the grand announcement made by Chris- tian Peregin last Wednesday: when he solemnly informed the Universe – and in such dramatic tones, too – that he would be… um… leaving a career in jour- nalism, to take up a consultancy position within a political party. Because that, ultimately, is what actually happened. The way he announced it, though: 'I am moving on, and this why'; 'I feel like my mission is complete and I am ready to dedicate my time to try and solve a new prob- lem…'… Honestly: what does he think this is? An episode of 'Star Trek: the Next Generation'? 'To boldly go, where no man has ever gone before…?' If so: well, I hate to break this to him, but… Peregin's 'bold' ca- reer move hardly constitutes the first (or even most noteworthy) time that a journalist has jumped ship in a self-styled mission to 'save the world', you know. Take Superman, for instance. If you'll remember, Clark Kent was a journalist, too. He worked for a newspaper called The Dai- ly Planet. But whenever danger drew near, you could rest as- sured that the mild-mannered reporter would simply jump into the nearest phone-booth, put on a bright blue leotard, and… hey presto! Journalist no longer. It's 'super- hero' from now on, thank you very much… See? Nothing new. And the same, by the way, could be said for Spiderman. Ever paused to wonder why the late, great Stan Lee also conceived Peter Parker as an undercover photo-jour- nalist: this time, for a fictitious newspaper named 'The Daily Bugle'…? Well, my own guess – for what it's worth – is that there has always been a rather visible 'revolving door' between jour- nalism, and certain other career paths that also involve 'power'. Like… erm… politics, for in- stance… And you don't exactly need to read comic-books to find oth- er examples, either. In my own career in Maltese journalism, I have quite literally lost count of the colleagues I've known, or worked with, who did more or less exactly what Christian Peregin so boldly did this week. That is to say, they likewise simply upped and left their me- dia organisations, from one day to the next, to find jobs within political structures (mostly, as communications officers for Cabinet ministers). And guess what? In most – if not all – of those cases… hey presto! They all simply disap- peared, just like that, in a puff of party-propaganda: never to be seen or heard of again (which is not to say that they won't all be hard at work, mind you – mostly, sending out angry emails to the newspapers they once worked for, or demanding 'right-of-re- ply', etc.) But… all of them, without ex- ception, simply lost what little presence they may have had be- fore, in the arena of public opin- ion. And personally, I've always seen that as a great loss for Mal- tese journalism, myself; as well as, of course, a huge gain for… well… absolutely no one, really. (No, not even the political par- ties: for let's face it, they don't actually make any proper use of those people's talents, do they?) And I've always said so, too. 'Think it through carefully, laddie,' I would say, on those rare occasions when I was ap- proached for advice. 'You might end up realising that you actual- ly had far more power – of your own – back in the days when you worked for an independent media house… instead of some- thing as self-serving as a political party, or government…' The only difference, in this case, is that I might also add: "Oh, and all this is particularly true, if your stated intention also happens to be: to prevent Mal- ta from becoming a one-party state, by rebuilding the Nation- alist Party into a serious, credi- ble alternative government…." For again: Christian Peregin is not, at the end of the day, even the first former journalist to ac- tually try and achieve that very goal. That honour would have to go to former Times news editor Caroline Muscat; and… well… we all saw how that turned out, in the end. To be fair to Caroline, it prob- ably (almost certainly, in fact) wasn't her own fault… and that, by the way, is the whole point of the superhero analogy to begin with: you really do need to have 'super powers', to succeed in this particular department… … but whatever changes she tried to effect in that party, clearly did not work out in prac- tice. Not only did the PN go on to suffer its worst-ever electoral defeat in 2017; but it also subse- quently dismembered itself into irreconcilable warring factions… resulting in a situation that is in- finitely worse today, than when Caroline Muscat took over in 2016. So… what sort of 'super pow- ers' does Peregin even think he has, to believe that his mere in- put, alone, might actually make so much as even the tiniest little difference…? Reason I ask is because: well, reading through his statement again, it doesn't look as though what Christian Peregin's pro- posing is substantially very dif- ferent from the existing status quo (even if, bizarrely, he claims his intention is to challenge it…) Consider just his reasons for choosing the PN (and not, say, founding a new party of his own; or joining one of Malta's many fledgling political movements, etc): "As much as I support the efforts of the smaller parties, we need to be honest in our assess- ment and realise that it is only the PN that has a fighting chance to grow into an alternative gov- ernment, since it already enjoys 30% of the country's support…" Translation: the PN is the on- ly party capable conceivably of forming a government… on its own. That is to say, singlehand- edly occupying 50%+1 of the House of Representatives… to de facto become the equivalent of Malta's next 'one party state', for the next five years… If successful, then, Peregin's vision would only take us all the way back to the 1980s – when there really were only two par- ties on the ballot sheet (AD only came onto the scene in 1992) – and, while I'm the first to con- cede that 'two' is probably bet- ter than 'one', in this particular scenario… well, it's still the same old 'two-party system' that got us into this whole mess to begin with. Not much of a solution to Malta's 'democratic deficit', is it now? Moreover, it doesn't even con- stitute much of a foundation on which to actually 'rebuild' the PN from a 'shadow of its former self'. There was a reason why the PN used to be 'its 'former self', you know: i.e., an unstoppable, elec- tion-winning machine. Actually, Peregin explains it himself: "de- spite a proud history, [the PN] in many ways stopped being rel- evant after EU membership be- cause it had fulfilled the purpose that had driven it since the late