Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1473504
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 JULY 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION No, Jason. There is nothing 'mad' about voting for a free boob-job… IN all my years of writing this column, never – not in my wildest dreams – did I imagine I would one day end up compar- ing Sir Winston Churchill to (of all peo- ple) Jason Azzopardi. But then again, there were a lot of other things I never imagined I'd end up doing… like, for instance, writing articles about 'free boob-jobs'. (Honest- ly, though: who would ever have seen those two coming, huh?) Besides: Jason Azzopardi made it more or less impossible for me to pass up this challenge… having practically made the comparison himself, in a Facebook up- date this week. And I'm glad he did, too, because – believe it or not – it turns out that those two politicians DO have a couple of things in common, after all. (I'll give you a hint from now: 'Winning the War' isn't one of them…) But back to Jason Azzopardi's post. It's a little too long to reproduce in full; so I'll limit myself to this Lovin' Malta press summary: "Former PN MP Jason Azzopardi has recounted a particularly unusual house visit he went on last February, which he said left him questioning the essence of democracy. "Azzopardi said he knocked on the door of a social housing unit and was greeted by a large family, all of whom spoke politics with him and told him they would vote PN: except for the girl- friend of one of the sons. 'She stayed quiet, smoking a cigarette, and [the rest of the family] told me she was from another district,' he said. 'However, as I was leaving, she spoke out and her words hit me like a cold shower.'" "According to Azzopardi, the woman told him: 'Listen up, you. I'm not giving my vote to either the PN or the PL.' [Ja- son] asked her whether she was joking or whether she was voting ADPD. She re- plied that she was not joking, and that she would give her first-preference vote to [Żaren] Tal-Ajkla because he was going to give her money to expand her breasts." It was at this point that Winston Churchill was – presumably, to his own great surprise – dragged into the pic- ture. Azzopardi ends his anecdote with the line: "I left the home reflecting on what Churchill had famously said about democracy…" Now: interestingly enough, Jason didn't specify which particular Church- ill quote he had in mind (of the sever- al hundred – real, or attributed – that would have fit that situation rather neatly.) The Lovin' Malta article suggests it might have been his most famous aph- orism about democracy: i.e., that "[it] is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried, from time to time". And who knows? That may well be correct. I, however, suspect that Jason Azzo- pardi may have reflected upon another, lesser-known Churchill quote. Namely, that: "the best argument against democ- racy, is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Either way, however: let's pause for a moment, to consider what those two quotes – the latter being most likely apocryphal, by the way – tell us about how Winston Churchill actually regard- ed democracy, himself. In the first, Churchill grudgingly (and humorously) admits to the virtues of democracy… by comparing it to 'all the other forms of government that have been tried'. And yes: on that scale, de- mocracy certainly emerges as 'prefer- able' (given that the alternative is in- variably going to be 'tyranny': in one ideological manifestation, or another). As such, Churchill was clearly – albeit sardonically – praising democracy with that remark; even if, at the end of the day, it remains very much a 'lesser evil' argument. The second quote, however, is a little more problematic. For starters, there is no evidence that Churchill ever really uttered those exact words (but he did express similar sentiments on other oc- casions: so I'll ignore that objection, for now); but also, because it comes from a political leader whom history has – rightly, or wrongly – lionised for having 'won Word War II' (thereby 'saving de- mocracy from the clutches of tyranny', and all that.) It seems, then, that the man who 'saved democracy' was somewhat disdainful of that same political model, himself. And while I cannot pin the remark down to any specific date in history (for the sim- ple reason that it cannot even be ver- ified), I think it's safe to deduce that, if he ever said those words at all… it would most likely have been soon af- ter the 1945 election: which Churchill lost by a landslide to Clement Atlee's Labour Party, despite having only just 'won the war'. More specifically: it was also the first democratic election that Churchill ac- tually contested (having been appoint- ed Prime Minister, at the head of a War Cabinet, in 1940). And OK: he did go on to win one election, in 1951… but still. It is hard not to imagine that the cat- astrophic 1945 defeat would have net- tled a political figure of the calibre of Winston Churchill (so soon after hav- ing been hailed as the hero of 'Britain's finest hour', too…) Right, let me guess. You're beginning to see the comparison for yourselves, aren't you? For while Jason Azzopardi might not be credited with 'saving de- mocracy' – except, perhaps, in his own imagination – he certainly does project himself as some kind of 'Messianic Cru- sader': tirelessly championing all the values of democracy, as though they depended on his own election to Parlia- ment for their very survival. … yet there the same Jason Azzopardi suddenly is: subconsciously revealing