Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1522634
OUT of curiosity: has the Prime Minister ever considered hiring a professional public-speaking consultant? Or – if that's too expensive (you know: on top of all the 'superyacht fuel', and everything else) – just literally picking anyone with half-a-brain from off the street, and asking for a little advice on 'what to say'? No, I didn't think so either. Take the interview Robert Abela gave – on his own par- ty media, please note – soon after the full extent of the 'shock' EP election result was made public. In a welcome break with tra- dition, the interviewer actu- ally asked some pretty point- ed questions: all couched in the usual deferential tones, of course… but however dif- ferently they may have been worded, they could all be more or less summed up as: "So, um… what went wrong? How did this supposed 'sol- id victory for Labour' [ahem] somehow end up turning into a defeat so utterly cataclysmic, that Labour lost not only its one-seat majority in the Eu- ropean Parliament… but also, more than 30,000 of its own supporters, in one fell swoop?' But before turning to the (rather incredible) answer the Prime Minister actually gave … let's pause to consider what a professional public-speaking consultant – or even his nine- ty-year-old next-door neigh- bour, if it comes to it – might have counselled him to say, or not say, in answer to that question. Now: I am, of course, not exactly a 'professional pub- lic-speaking consultant', my- self (though who knows? If Joseph Muscat can sudden- ly become a world authority on tropical birds… well, 'the sky's the limit', innit?) All the same, however: I'm fairly con- fident that any expert in the field would probably have ad- vised the Prime Minister to do some, if not all, of the follow- ing things: Properly analyse the election result, before offering any 'in- terpretation' of it; Acknowledge that the result is an unmistakable 'warning shot across the bows' (or a 'Yellow Card', as this newspa- per's editorial put it last Sun- day); and as such… Choose your words VERY carefully, to project the gen- eral message that the above 'warning' has been well-and- truly understood; that your administration has learnt all the lessons from its past mis- takes; and above all, that you shall henceforth strive, to the best of your abilities, not to persist with such mistakes in future. Or something like that, any- way. The exact wording may vary wildly, from consultant to consultant…. but I have no doubt that their advice would bear at least a vague resem- blance, to any-or-all of the above. Unless, of course, they're the ones that Robert Abela actu- ally hired: in which case, their advice would probably have sounded like… … well, a little like the ad- vice that Penultimo gives to El Presidente, in the popular 'Tropico' video-game series [Note: I've written about this game before; you'll find the article here. For now, all you need to know is that the game parodies a Banana Republic somewhere in the Caribbean: in which the player assumes the role of 'tin-pot dictator'] Among the many options Pe- nultimo offers, when it comes to writing your Campaign Speech for the forthcoming elections, is… 'Praise Yourself' (as tinpot dictators are after all expected to do: especially if they are also equipped with something called the, ahem, 'Megalomaniac' perk.) In the game, the resulting 'campaign speech' sounds something like: 'Yes, there are problems. There will al- ways be problems! But as your Presidente, I have worked tire- lessly, night and day… done quite a job, let me tell you!... to address those very problems you all complain about. And I would have succeeded, too… if it wasn't for those pesky, med- dling [Liberals / Environmen- talists / Militarists / Commu- nists / Capitalists/ Etc., etc.] who kept getting in the way…' Oh, OK. I was quoting from memory, there… and 'Scoo- by Doo' somehow got tangled up in the mix. But you get the general idea, regardless. In a video game which simu- lates a god-forsaken Caribbe- an Banana Republic, ruled by a demagogue who openly sneers at the entire democratic pro- cess… you get the additional option of irritating your sub- jects even further, through a combination of 'praising your- self' (when they are starving); and 'blaming everything and everybody for your own mis- takes' (which caused them to starve, in the first place). But, well, 'Tropico' is a vid- eo-game; and one other fea- ture of video-games is that it doesn't matter all that very much, if you pick the wrong option during gameplay. (In other words: you can always just start out all over again, af- ter the 'Game Over' message.) In real life, however? Not so much. Which, I suppose, ex- plains my utter bewilderment, when I heard the Prime Minis- ter – with my own ears, please note (I wasn't willing to rely only on newspaper paraphras- es, for this one) – using exactly the same 'Praise Yourself' op- tion (complete with the 'Blame everybody else' part), in that same interview! maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 JUNE 2024 10 OPINION New definition of irony: Robert Abela complaining about 'cushy jobs' Raphael Vassallo Prime Minister Robert Abela interviewed on ONE by Wayne Sammut, a communications advisor at OPM