Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1471185
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 JUNE 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION The fastest (and most infuriating) u-turn in history… I was tempted to start this article with the line: "I've seen a few political U-turns, in my time"… But on second thoughts, that would: a) make me sound slightly (but only slight- ly) more of a 'boring old fart' than I really am; and b), it would be the more or less the same as saying: "I've breathed a bit of Oxygen, you know, since the day that I was born…" For let's face it, folks: political parties tend to change their policy positions so in- credibly frequently, in this country – even in matters that are supposed to be 'dear to their heart' – that British pop-band The Police even wrote a song about it once. It was called 'Every Breath You Take'; and as I recall, it was a hit-single back in 1983 (and, thanks to 'Puff Daddy', a con- sistent fan-favourite ever since). In any case: things clearly haven't changed all that much in the meantime. Because even if you only consider the U-turns per- formed by one of our two main parties – the PN – in recent years: you can almost safely bet, upon 'breathing in', that by the time you exhale… the Nationalist Party would have contradicted itself (sometimes UTTERLY) on at least one, if not more, of its most central policy-platforms. Examples, I hear you ask? Well, take your pick. On the COVID-19 pandemic, for in- stance: the Nationalist Party initially (and quite justifiably) tore into the government over its 'laissez-faire' attitude during the first wave – and, as usual, in the most in- flammatory way imaginable (remember all those billboards, accusing Robert Abela of having 'blood on his hands'?)… … only to end up lambasting the same government, a year later, for 'damaging the economy' by 'taking too long to relax the health restrictions' (you know: the same restrictions that the PN itself had earlier criticised, for 'not being restrictive enough'…) Then, there was that time when the same party overturned its entire opposition to the Cannabis Legalisation bill: first accus- ing the government of 'not listening to medical experts'… only to later disregard the advice of those same experts them- selves (not to mention their own warnings of 'dire social consequences', etc.) by sim- ply, um, 'voting in favour of the bill', after all that hullaballoo. Yup, folks: just like that, from one mo- ment to the next… and without, as I far as I can see, ever uttering a single word of explanation, for the extraordinary change of heart. Before that again, the PN had already performed at least two separate U-turns on one single issue – IVF – in the space of just a few years. From a position of 'to- tal opposition to the entire technology', on purely moral grounds… the PN went on to become the party that actually introduced Malta's first (and unsurprisingly, ineffec- tive) IVF regulatory framework, in 2012. And then, after having waged an all-out war against 'embryo freezing' throughout that time - a fact which separately accounts for why the 2012 legislation was so flawed in the first place - well, what do you know? When this position became manifestly too unscientific to carry on justifying, in the face of irrefutable medical results: the PN simply performed what legendary Italian football commentator Bruno Pizzul would have described as a 'capovolgimento di fronte'… and, well, that's it, really. The same party that had so recently been 'all-out against embryo-freezing', is sud- denly 'all out in favour'. Except that… by this time, it had found another (remark- ably similar) technological aspect of the same medical procedure, to suddenly kick up a whole moral stink about. PGT testing: a technology that allows for the genetic screening of IVF-conceived human embryos, to avert the possibility of transmitting up to nine hereditary health conditions. Oh, and which is also 'moral- ly objectionable' on more or less the exact same grounds as 'embryo freezing' used to be, until just a couple of years earlier.… Oh, well. Already, I suppose, you can see that there is a certain unsustainability to all this consistent political 'yo-yoing'. (And if you still can't see it, may I humbly suggest you take another look at the last election result. It can't all be down to 'infighting within the PN', can it? Surely, the sheer of level of political inconsistency, alone – and all the confusion it must inevitably create, among the PN's own voters – must have something to do with that party's cata- strophic defeat, as well…) But even I – who have inhaled so many political U-turns, with almost 'every breath I took' – was somewhat surprised by the sheer speed with which the same PN performed its latest feat of political gymnastics. (So surprised, in fact, that there is even another 1980s pop classic to describe the sensation: it literally 'took my breath away…') OK, tell you what: look at it from my own perspective, for a moment. Just last Sunday, I interviewed Opposition health spokesman Stephen Spiteri on this very topic. At one I point, I even asked him the ques- tion directly: "given that your earlier posi- tion has changed, between 2018 and today: should we expect this one [opposition to PGT] to change, too?" I won't bother reproducing his exactly answer here: partly because, well, you can all read it for yourselves (it was only up- loaded a couple of days ago, after all); and partly because – just a couple of days lat- er – it is already completely and utterly…