Oh please, how I wish many of my country folk would grow up and muster a degree of sophistication. I cannot believe the palaver, fuss and non-sequitur comments online following a photomontage of Prime Minister Laurence Gonzi in Gaddafi’s uniform on a Facebook page.
The much more serious articles about the resignation of Professor Stephen Brincat, the head of Mater Dei Hospital’s oncology department and its aftermath got less than half the number of comments overall. But more on that later; back to satire.
The Nationalist Party used to have the edge on sophistication. I am afraid they have been regressing and have lost it completely with their statement claiming the photomontage was “shameful, personal, rude and vulgar”.
Now, of course it was personal. It was meant to lampoon the Prime Minister. How can you send up the Prime Minister if not personally? It was silly of Rachel Tua, the woman whose page it appeared on, to say, “I don’t see why they should take it so personally.”
Really? Does she believe that depicting someone in a way that derides him is not personal? It was political satire and was not shameful, rude or vulgar is what Ms Tua should have told reporters and she would have been right.
How can a poster of the Prime Minister in a uniform (albeit Gaddafi’s) be shameful, rude or vulgar? Do many of the 322 Times online commentators really believe that Gonzi in a Gaddafi uniform meant he was as awful as Muammar? Are they really so simple minded? It was a send-up, a parody, not to be taken literally.
Politicians and other leaders all over the globe are wide open to that kind of gibe and they accept and ignore it, except in countries run by tyrants. Why the PN thinks its leader should be any different to the rest of the democratic world leaders says a lot about how unworldly it is.
Most of the online comments were by partisans, which is the norm here. They either expressed shock that the Prime Minister could be lampooned (PN), or responded with “What is good for the goose...”(PL). Others claimed that really rude, shameful and vulgar blogs had not been commented on by the PN, getting the response from other commentators that Ms Tua was part of the PL, therefore she should desist from such activity.
Yes, the woman whose Facebook page it appeared on is a Labour councillor who switched political allegiances even though former PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami was her great uncle. She obviously has a political agenda. So what?
The PN is not exactly coy when it comes to ridiculing members of the Opposition. It is all part of the political, puerile fun and games. So what is all this about the PL showing its “true face”? Which is what the PN statement said. Of course this is mud-slinging time as both parties are gearing themselves up for a general election. But as mud-slinging goes, let’s face it; the photomontage in question is hardly heavy handed.
And another thing, besides the politicians and their hangers-on who obviously have a partisan agenda, this national, blinkered view that anyone who dares criticise or disagree must have a political (in the partisan sense) agenda is truly pathetic. Talk about thinking outside the box. We need to take a step back as a nation and start to engage our brains, at least those of us who have one.
Take Stephen Brincat’s resignation, since his sister is married to the Speaker of the House, he would hardly have been keen on upsetting the apple cart. He must have been really pushed to the limit to spill the beans. He said that the government repeatedly ignored his advice on various important issues, making his position untenable.
“The duties of a clinical chairman of a hospital department are not just to lead the service provision of that department but also to advise the government on matters pertaining to that speciality, cancer in this case... decisions were taken that wasted hundreds of thousands or euro”, he told The Times.
He gave a long detailed list of how the money was wasted. On the move of the oncology department, “Without the slightest bit of planning we were ordered to go to Zammit Clapp. After three years of useless planning we were then told we’d be going to Mater Dei.” Which is where Professor Brincat had agreed they should have gone in the first place. When he was asked whether he thought it was best to move oncology from Boffa to Mater Dei seven years ago, his answer was “a clear, though reluctant one, in favour of Mater Dei to join the other specialities,” he said.
“Apart from the hundreds of thousands of euro wasted, we wasted three precious years during which the life span of our single old linear accelerator (a machine) for treating cancer patients was fast running out.” Eventually, after the machine broke down several times, a new wing was built at Boffa to house a machine that had to eventually be moved to Mater Dei at great expense. “As always, no one is accountable,” he said.
Yet, how many people are worried about this lack of accountability? With all his faults, such a shame about his egocentricity and political naivety, Franco Debono was making waves on the answerability and responsibility of government.
Professor Brincat had warned the Health Department about the danger to the service, “but I was told that the political decision had been taken and that I should therefore shut up”.
Now, that latter statement does reek of a dictatorial style of governance.
Although Prof. Brincat made these sentiments public, many medical professionals are still not prepared to publicly back him on similar allegations despite “the policy to deliberately keep the National Cancer Plan a secret from the professionals that were meant to execute it until the day it was published”, which Professor Brincat disagreed with.
In an interview I had with another medical professional some years ago, this ‘secrecy’ factor, i.e. keeping the professionals in the dark right up to publication date of new plans, did come up. So it is nothing new. That begs the question, what are the professionals scared of? Why are they all keeping mum?
Article published in the Malta Independent on Sunday on 09 September 2012
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