Disgraced. That’s the first thing they have in common. Donald, Boris and Joseph.
For a while, they led their respective countries. For a while, they sold a dream of making their nations great.
They hypnotised their followers into believing that they would fulfil their dreams and aspirations with the kind of skill that would make snake-oil merchants blush.
Then, as fast as their comets had risen in the constellation of the greats, came the rapid downfall into disgrace.
A sense of impunity, invincibility. That’s the second thing they have in common. In their own way, they felt that they had become invincible, untouchable.
They believed their own lies, the lies they had sold to get to the highest peak possible within their own back yard. As they did so, they betrayed the very principle they had claimed to uphold and revive. They dismantled institutions and public faith in them.
Third. A sense of self-importance bordering on a messiah complex. Presidential and prime ministerial positions were mere formalities that disguised imperial undertones.
Not for them the constrictions of the law and custom. Not for them the minutiae of the balance and separation of powers in representative democracy.
They might never have uttered the words, but they did not fall far short of L’Etat c’est moi (I am the State). Après nous, le deluge (After us, the flood). Even after their cataclysmic fall in the style of Icarus, they find it hard to accept the idea that the world could go on without them.
Irrationality. Fourth, underneath the mask of a calm, rational persona in control of its destiny, we discover the irrational thoughts of a cornered rat. Spitting and gritting its teeth at its nemesis, the cornered rat speaks in the language of conspiracies, where the whole world is out to get them.
The cornered rat is indignant that its contribution to the world has gone unappreciated and eclipsed by what it considers peccadillos of the mildest kind.
How Boris Johnson howled. In his resignation statement, he fired salvo upon salvo on the Privileges Committee. The wounded lion cared little that his angry rant would undermine the most sacred of British institutions.
“Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court. They [members of the Committee] should have recused themselves,” Boris said.
There it is. Persecution. Conspiracy. Justice no longer works if justice has Boris in its sights.
How Donald Trump wailed. “The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country. (…) This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice.”
The Justice Department, according to the disgraced former president, was “a sick nest of people that need to be cleaned out.” The federal probe of handling sensitive documents was “a witch hunt”. Donald makes no bones of dismantling the system. Justice is dead.
How Joseph Muscat lamented. Under friendly fire in an interview with propagandist Emanuel Cuschieri, Muscat described a magisterial inquiry as a “dirty game”.
He threatened to sue “those who have fomented it”. His detractors were apparently “freemasons” well connected to members of the judiciary.
Ironically this was “his” judiciary, riddled with political appointees of clear Labour affiliation. Still, the cornered disgraced politician wants a recusal. His justification for the request is bias by relation – risible at worst but dangerously hypocritical coming from the very mouth of the politician who redefined meritocracy in judicial circles.
The game should be up for the three of them. Should the institutions manage to do the full course in each and every case, then we could have restored hope in the proper functioning of blind justice.
The demise of their respective political careers could also be an important milestone marking the end of the kind of populist politics that has ravaged representative democracy in the past decade or so.
Do not, however, underestimate the danger of cornered rats.
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“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Despite his obvious simplifications, the old drunk had a point. In the Maltese context, I blame our current predicament on a failed educational system. Barely literate masses are easily manipulated, no matter how fantastical the claims. Manna is still expected from Castille, so long as you exchange your vote for the right bag of oranges. Yet, anyone who doesn’t understand how the world actually works is easy prey for the unscrupulous.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE!!!????????
THE INCOMPETENT LABOUR GOVERNMENT LED BY NO OTHER THAN INVECTUS, WAS PREPPED FOR CORRUPTION AND FRAUD FROM DAY ONE!!!????????
HOPEFULLY THESE CONMEN ALL WIND UP BEHIND BARS!!!????????
Li tqabbel lil Muscat ma’ Trump u Johnson mhuwiex paragun shih, fil-fehma tieghi.
Ghax Muscat u Abela huma kriminali tal-livell ta’ Pablo Escobar. Li jitmejlu u jixtru lill-fqir biex jistaghnew huma mill-kriminalità jew biex igawdu l-poter.
Jekk gurdien twasslu f’kantuniera u ma’ jkollux min fejn jahrab, ghax tkun qed tipprova taqbdu, itir ghal wiccek. Dan jigri ghax tkun qed tipprova tiffaccjah min quddiem. Hekk jaf jirbahlek. Izda jekk tipprova taqbdu min wara, jigifieri min dembu dan jirnexxilek aktar..
…ghal min irid jifhem.
There is something else which all the three have in common too. It is their megalomania, each person in his own ways.
Maybe, and one can probably just hope that it might be so, time is about to change and with the dowfall of the three mentioned in this article, there seems to be some hope. With the demise of Berlusconi, the far-right in Italy has lost one of its financiers and old populists. In his own ways, Berlusconi would just fit in with the other three and one wonders, whether these three might not have, at some time and from time to time, looked at him and took something from him as an example to follow.
The downfall of populism and their leaders is the way to free democracy from the shadows these people have imposed on it.
Still, as things appear, it takes far more time until those who always followed them blindly are going to realise what they have been into.
I couldn’t care less about the demise of Berlusconi, same goes with the downfall of Trump, Johnson and Muscat. I am merely waiting to see the end of the others who are just like them.
Dal miserabli Muscat veru wiccu u sormu l istess u ma jisthi min hadd u min xejn. Qed jilghaba tal vitma miskien issa li nkixiflu l haxi li ghamel. Kieku Daphne ma kixfitlux sormu u spiccat tilfet hajjieta kieku dal gurdien tad drennag ghadu jirenja u min jaf x kien jivinta iktar! Tibzax sur ex PM Hadd wara Hadd tasal ta kulhadd u anki tieghek ser tasal mal hin.
I’ve always thought that Berlusconi paved the way for the others, and I’m his ability to evade jail time no doubt added to their conviction that they would similarly get away with their illegalities. The narcissism, the power-hungry drive, the disdain of the media and of women, the pattern runs virtually unbroken.
Berlusconi was another piece of work. Meloni, from La Garbatella should be ashamed of declaring national mourning for a piece of shite like him. A fraudster, a sex offender, predator, nsrcissist who led his people under false pretences.
National mourning was not even pronounced when two martyrs of the Republic like Falcone or Borsellino were so heartless blown to smithereens! His funeral guest list included the likes of Viktor Orban, Abdullatif Rashid, the Iranian president, the Turkish minister of foreign affairs, the Emir of Qatar and other terrorists. Our very own Ian Borg was mentioned on a reportage in a leading Italian newspaper, in the same breath.
Italy’s national media & obviously Mediaset eulogised him as though he were the Pope or the Messiah.
He will be sorely missed by all the puffy-lipped, duck bill look alikes, those women who surely had to compromise their integrity and self respect on their way up to some coveted positions as TV personalities or politicians. If you followed the funeral you can tell.
Berlusconi was left out of this list but he is still a bird of a feather.
What a shame. Populism will end up assassinating democracy one day in the near future.
‘Populism will end up assassinating democracy one day in the near future.’
This future is already the recent past and the present, depending on the country one refers to.
The worst onslaught on democracy was the storming of the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 when Trump lost the election.
The undermining of democracy was also a matter of the Bolsonaro regime in Brasil, the Brexit in the UK with a Tory Party that morphed into a extremist right-wing party. The list goes on, from Hungary to Poland, Russia goes without saying, wherever the far-right is successfully infiltrating and overtaking conservatism, or centre-right parties, it has its way.
The fact that the PL in Malta has morphed from a Mintoffian voters club with a Socialist label and during his era, a semi-Communist regime without abolishing the democratic constitution of Malta, but de facto ruling Malta like those Eastern Bloc regimes at that time, into a greedy capitalist party is very telling. It shows that the parameters between traditional left and right in politics don’t matter once corruption has taken hold of the ruling party.
Italy is a case onto itself because since the end of WWII, they had no problem with people who still admired the gone Fascist era and its leader. Some disguise themselves as ‘modern national-conservatives’ and like to act accordingly. Others promoted by the present PM of Italy had and have a more ‘frank’ way of unashamedly showing their true colours.
Compare the Maltese PL to all those right-wing and anti-EU parties who are in government in the above mentioned fellow EU member states. I am rather going with the fact that you know that yourself and I realised this myself some time ago what the PL really is and where it stands. Not to be deluded by their cheap propaganda and their lies.
For all the similarities mentioned before, I am not surprised by anything anymore when it comes to the PL, whether it is on a domestic or international level. This party has been disgraced by its own disgraced former leader and PM of Malta, who is still pulling the strings behind the scenes. But the PL has also disgraced itself and no wonder, because plenty of their members and followers are just the sort of fellow populists on which the PL’s system thrives.
My comment is only about Trump:
We must be fair when someone comments. Influencing people is very serious and can become a crime. Collecting propaganda fake news from the controlled international mainstream media such as google and many others such as CNN or BBC, one has to first proof these allegations, and
time and ability is a must and only well experienced seasoned journalists and researchers can do this job of getting the truth from much boycotted
banned independent media journalists by the world’s community mainstream media .Making sure you’re telling the fair thing is a difficult and long process of professional investigation.
Besides that, he was born already rich like many other well known personalities. As far as I know since many years is that he inherited before becoming popular..