Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1470553
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 JUNE 2022 OPINION 5 LEGAL Notice 161/22 seems to be geared at turning the status of Valletta – until some time ago striving to attain international cultural status – into a second Paceville, with bars allowed to have blaring music into the early hours. It is thanks to the media that we know this has happened. With Comino taken over by the deckchair pirates and now also the Hili Group, it is thanks to Moviment Graffitti that the entire nation has woken up to this injustice and the unen- forced access to the public's shoreline. And when a bunch of specula- tors are planning to deface the valley or a village, it is usually the media, and a few NGOs, who raise the alarm. But generally, the govern- ment prefers using its policy of 'say nothing and stay silent and look the other way'. Aware that its majority requires it to do nothing and simply get on with its business, it will only tend to the other niches it needs to keep being elected into power. So who would people, in the circumstances that we woke up to on Saturday morning, expect to be the rallying cry for their grievances, if not Opposition leader Bernard Grech? They would expect him to be a refer- ence point for all that is wrong in the country, right? Not their personal concerns, but the problems that affect the coun- try and the common good. But when I interviewed Ber- nard Grech last week on Xtra, I did not only see a diminished man, but someone who could not put his finger on a problem, could not proceed to outline his vision and when confronted to come up with a clear posi- tion on IVF – the current hot debate in the House – he en- tertained the answer with his typical neither-yes-or-no reply. He insisted on holding PBS responsible for his failure in not attaining higher support in the last election and the far more cash-rich Labour Party. I thought it was his worst in- terview in months... blaming his electoral loss on everyone but himself. He would not complain of the spending spree that left the PN with its shocking legacy of debt under Lawrence Gonzi, Tonio Borg and Joe Saliba; neither could he justify why the PN's loss-making TV station was such a burden on the party. But to me the most worrying thing was that I saw in Grech a politician with very little ap- petite for political discourse or battle, lacking a clear un- derstanding of what it took to gain people's confidence. He was someone with nothing new to say, and someone finding it very difficult to inspire. And worst of all, is seeing once again the PN strangled by its ideological past on IVF, buckling under the pressure of conservative groups. It seems ready to repeat the same mis- takes it made in the past on LGBT rights, cannabis and of course divorce. So I am afraid that Bernard Grech has no clue of where the PN should go politically and how it can make change and win with change. And that is very bad news, because even though Robert Abela can be applauded on some fronts, this country is in very dire need of an active opposition that can also make the electorate believe that it can support the PN. So Abela has a free hand to do as he pleases. And as a col- league succinctly described to me, Labour's success is based on a loose adaptation of the "pursuit of happiness", a well- known phrase in the United States Declaration of Inde- pendence. The same goes for IVF and PGT – Labour is tar- geting a group of people that deserves to have some happi- ness. The ones denying this, the Church's curmudgeons and other hypocrites, are the an- tithesis to this goal. Labour has targeted nich- es across the board, seeing to their needs, and sometimes it has also done this to the detri- ment of the common good but to the benefit of profiteers. But it has also targeted groups that are in need of emancipatory politics. In this mix of part-social de- mocracy, part-populism, you see a winning formula that is aided by the Nationalist Party being effectively dead, with a leader who seems to be unable to chart a future for the party. I cannot see the PN making inroads until the party is led by a new leader that understands politics, the art of doing pol- itics, and the importance of winning the middle ground. Used car racket It is just incredible that after last Sunday's exclusive story in MaltaToday over how some second-hand car dealers had defrauded people by tampering with the cars' mileage, the po- lice have not let us known what is happening. And neither has government much. It is as if this kind of activity is not such a big deal, or such a serious offence. It is perhaps typical for the current climate that everything is going to be okay 'so let us not make such a big fuss.' Or could it be that since most of us are so used or involved in living around irregularities, such a story should not really come as a big surprise? Candid Giglio Joe Giglio's appraisal of Maria Efimova, the so-called Egrant whistleblower, which saw him express serious reservations about her, led to his 'colleague' Karol Aquilina, Aquilina's brother Robert and David Ca- sa to tell Giglio that "under- mining the credibility of the Egrant whistleblower is not only highly irresponsible but also an insult to the memory of courageous journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and activists who have been fighting relent- lessly for truth and justice." Harsh words, indeed words that have dominated the Tali- banesque attitude towards an- yone who does follow the doc- trine they have long set out. But surely the three men who came out screaming against Joe Giglio (a potential future leader of the Nationalist Par- ty) should be more honest and distinguish between the work Caruana Galizia uncovered in the Panama Papers and also the seeds of 17 Black, and the story constructed around Efimova's unreliable claims. Surely it cannot be that if someone speaks his mind or states some uncomfortable truth, they are immediately de- clared to be an affront to the memory of Caruana Galizia. Those who dealt directly and talked to Efimova told me that when it came to the beef, Efi- mova was unable to deliver and give 'them' more constructive proof. In other words, she was unable to join the dots. Wheth- er Efimova was a fraud or a daring whistleblower changes nothing about the work carried out by Caruana Galizia, work that no one imagined would have led to her murder and reveal the involvement of the people inside Castille. I sense that the outburst against Giglio is more about the fear that this successful criminal defence lawyer may be the solution to returning the Nationalist party to some form of normality. Time will tell. The pursuit of happiness and why Grech will get nowhere Saviour Balzan Bernard Grech on XTRA this week