Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1467182
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 8 MAY 2022 OPINION 11 ways remains the same: polit- ical parties start losing sight of their own financial man- agement, only when they're in government: and NOT when they're in opposition. And why does that happen, I wonder? Well, partly be- cause we still live in a country where disproportionate pow- er is vested into government; and I need hardly add that, with both Labour and PN up to their eyeballs in precisely the same muck… neither party has all that much of a reason (or at least, not one that is 'self- ish' enough) to actually try and change the status quo…. … or at least: not until now. This is, in fact, why I comment- ed earlier that the PN's current financial predicament 'doesn't even look all that abysmal, for a change'. For even if, on the surface, Bernard Grech's posi- tion is not exactly what you'd call 'enviable' … being in that position still gives him a card to play, that – quite frankly – no other PN leader had ever been dealt before. If nothing else, Bernard Grech now has a spectacular opportu- nity to actually deliver – where so many of his predecessors have manifestly failed – on that immortal promise by Lawrence Gonzi in 2004: 'A new way of doing politics', remember? Now: I won't waste too much time speculating what Gonzi might have actually meant by that, himself; what I will say, however, is that those precise words did certainly chime in with a general mood, at the time (so much so, that it iron- ically became the driving force behind Gonzi's own historic defeat, in 2013…) And seeing as how nothing has really changed at all, since those words were first ut- tered…. well, let me put it this way. There may be very little, realistically speaking, that Ber- nard Grech can do to save his own party from bankruptcy; but there is quite a lot he CAN do – even right now, as we speak – to challenge the same status quo that has reduced the Nationalist Party to its current, abysmal state. I know it might sound drastic (though it's been suggested be- fore: even internally)… but he could actually do the unthink- able, and 'declare bankruptcy' himself: if not of the entire Nationalist Party, at least of its commercial arm – namely, its media empire – that is current- ly haemorrhaging literally mil- lions a year… Not only would that halt at least a little of the financial bleeding; (whilst also sparing the PN the embarrassment of eventually going into 'forced liquidation', etc.), but… to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I can even predict the ramifi- cations, of the political earth- quake that would surely follow. Starting only with how it would affect the media land- scape: the collapse of just one, of our two politically-owned media houses, would instant- ly – just like that, in one fell swoop – 'nullify' the entire ar- gument that the Broadcasting Authority has been using for years, to justify their existence in the first place: i.e., 'because they balance each other out'. Well… not anymore, they wouldn't! And as such, the BA would certainly no longer be able to keep ignoring the wholesale, flagrant defiance of its own broadcasting poli- cies (while imposing them on everyone else). What would happen in prac- tice, however, I'm not entirely sure. Either the Labour Party would have to also abandon its own ownership structure… or, at minimum, it would have to somehow 'tone down' its bla- tant pro-Labour bias, in line with BA directives. Either way, however, it would automatically do more to change 'how politics is done', in this country, than pretty much everything else that has ever been tried since Inde- pendence. (And it would prob- ably be the start of a 'domino -effect', too: because let's face it: we wouldn't exactly be able to keep everything geared up 'only for the benefit of two parties'… when those 'two par- ties' suddenly morph into 'only one'…) Ah yes, that reminds me. There is, I'm afraid, a small downside to this otherwise spectacularly 'brilliant' strate- gy. For it to actually succeed, Bernard Grech would have to do a 'Bruce Willis from Arma- geddon': and sacrifice himself, together with his own party, to 'save the world'… But, well, that's the thing with politicians, isn't it? They're so… selfish. They just never think about anyone, but them- selves… It took the Nationalist Party a good 23 years in government, to accumulate a debt of €32 million. Labour's only been at it for seven years… and by its own admission, it already owes €10 million in unpaid tax and utility bills