Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1474369
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 JULY 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Shine on you crazy… butterfly REMEMBER when we were young? (And 'shone like the sun', and all that?) Yeah, sure you do. Don't we all? It's just that some of us have to venture a little far- ther down memory lane, to actu- ally recapture those memories. And you know what happens when you venture a little too far in any direction, don't you? Sometimes, you get a little lost… This week, for instance, a se- ries of random online events – including a spat between the Animal Welfare Commissioner and the Sannat local council, over today's annual noon-time horse-race – jogged a distant memory of a certain independ- ent candidate named Richard Sultana. You might remember him as 'Tal-Farfett' – the fiercely proud (and mostly toothless) leader of the 'Independent Democratic Butterfly Party', who contested the 1987, 1992 and 1996 elections. In particu- lar, you might also recall how he had once famously prom- ised to "make the Marsa race- course straight… so that the horses don't get dizzy" [!] But, well, that's what I meant by 'getting lost'. As it happens, I have distinct memories of the Broadcasting Authority's electoral transmissions in 1987 (or at least, I thought I did); and what stands out most in those recollections – apart, of course, from Spiridione Sant's timeless rendition of the Na- tional Anthem – was precise- ly that 'racecourse' promise: delivered, with deadpan seri- ousness, straight from Richard Sultana's own mouth. So firmly was this notion fixed in my head, that I thought I could even remember him ac- tually saying it, in those very words. And I certainly remem- ber it being the source of much merriment on the school play- ground, in the days, weeks and years that followed…. And yet, when I tracked down the original clip – available for posterity on Youtube – I found, to my disappointment, that he never actually added that punchline about 'spar- ing horses from dizziness'. He did promise to 'straighten' the race-track: in fact, it was the first of his many, many pledges in that broadcast (and he even repeated it, for added empha- sis). But he stopped agonizingly short of giving us any reason WHY he wanted to do such an utterly potty thing. Which leads me to believe that the 'punchline' was either added to the narrative later (possibly, by schoolkids such as ourselves: in which case, I'd say we did a rather good job of it, all things considered)… … or else, he DID state some- thing to that effect, somewhere: but not during that particular broadcast; and not in 1992 or 1996, either. Because that's the point I was coming to. Having watched (and been mesmerized by) his performance in 1987, I went on to rewatch those of the next two elections, in sequence … by which point, I had long forgot- ten the original reason for even having looked up 'Tal-Farfett' in the first place. In case you were wonder- ing, the original reason was to showcase that – though Rich- ard Sultana's proposal may indeed have been as 'bat-shit crazy' as it sounded – at least, it suggested that he actual- ly CARED about the plight of animals such as race-horses (enough to want to protect them, even from imaginary causes of suffering). Why, oh why, then, is it so difficult for the Sannat local council (and all enthusiasts of traditional Maltese summer horse-races) to do the same today? For instance: by simply shifting the time of those races, from 'High Noon' – when it is manifestly too hot for horses to be at full-gallop, on tarmac-sur- faced roads - until after 4pm… as, after all, is already the law for karrozzin horses? But… I have to admit that my original objective got a little lost, against the new (and un- expected) backdrop that had meanwhile swum into view. Because it was not just my memory of 'what Tal-Farfett said' that got distorted, over the past 30 or so years. The man himself turned out to be decidedly different, from the affable 'crackpot-politician' I remember from the 1980s. Leaving aside that, over the nine years that separate his first from his final electoral broad- cast, Richard Sultana seems to have literally shrivelled up, before our very eyes, into the mummified husk of a human being (by 1996, he had lost all but one of his few remaining teeth: assuming, in the pro- cess, a startling resemblance to Gollum from 'The Lord of the Rings'...) … and closing an eye at cer- tain questions that never ac- tually occurred to me, back in the day (such as: how ethical is it, really, to parade people like Richard Sultana – who would be described as 'vulnerable', by today's standards – on live TV, for popular entertainment?)... No, what struck me more is that Tal-Farfett's 'metamor- phosis' was not merely superfi- cial. At some point during that downward physical trajectory, Richard Sultana also acquired a certain mischievous twinkle in his eye. Unlike the deadpan-se- riousness of his 1987 out- ing – and, significantly, after the shock of his first electoral performance (he only got two votes: one of which, presuma- bly, was his own) – his entire demeanour becomes decided- ly more cynical. His answers become more cryptic; and his toothless smile, more enigmat- ic. So much so, that by the end of the 1996 video, it becomes hard to actually tell whether he really was still the same 'crack- pot' who had entertained us all so much 10 years earlier… or whether the joke had actually been 'on us', all along. Consider how often, in that