A Politician For All Seasons

Sigmund apologizes to his followers and detractors for his month-long absence. We were on a much needed sabbatical from the political circus. But we’re back with a BANG. Here, in the form of a poem, we launch our campaign for the forthcoming Mother of All Parliaments Elections.

Why you should vote for SIGMUND BONELLO

I’m PROGRESSIVE

I’m TRANsGRESSIVE

I’m GREEN

I’m RED

I’m BLUE

I’m YELLOW

I’m BLACK (THANKS OBAMA)

I’m COOL

I’m CARING

I’m MODERATE

And

SUSTAINABLE.

And given

Half a chance

I’d stab

Anyone

Who stands in my way

To death.

You’re warned.

 

Go Barack

This blog, written as it is by a cynical politician, is about the less savoury side of politics.

It’s about the cynics, the shameless, the opportunistic, the free-riders, the gravy-trainers and their hangers-on. 

But even cynics like Sigmund get genuinely emotional from time to time. And we have been getting more and more emotional as Big Tuesday approaches.

So fingers crossed tomorrow. God bless you Barack.

Catharsis

Can a blog serve as a cathartic experience? By the looks of things it can.

 

It’s just a pity that some local blogs make such depressing reading – proving, perhaps, that the insult is still Malta’s most powerful form of conversation. The top Maltese blog of the moment (judging by the number of comments sent in) is, in essence, an exercise in humiliation in which politicians are turned into animals, their physical defects routinely scrutinized and mocked. People who write in criticising the author’s take on things are told to fuck off and get a life (after being told that they possess a pathetically inferior intellect). Sigmund has been wondering why an intelligent person would choose to spend his or her day shovelling shit on other people in the most direct way possible – comparing them to garbage and to animals. Engaging, in other words in a process of dehumanisation. It brings us back to catharsis in a nation which doesn’t really know the meaning of the word “shame”. If discredited politicians can be brought back into the fold with a pat on the back and a hug without much ado for the sake of party unity, qisu ma gara xejn; if politicians can get away with crapping on Europe one day and metamorphosing into the nec plus ultra of European values the next (OK, OK – Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa); if talk of media ethics (a good thing in itself) rings of hypocrisy…Basically if the same old people who fucked up in the past are all over the place, grandstanding, making statements, telling you how things should be done, occupying the overcrowded public space which one hell of a small country provides…you’re going to find people who can’t stomach the fact that those people who fucked up so badly are still in their face, smiling at them smugly from TV sets and sweet-talking their way through newspaper interviews.

 

Some folks can’t stomach them and look the other way. Others can’t stomach them and empty their bowels over the entire country.

 

A catharsis of sorts and not entirely without cause either.

Let me kiss your ass…