18:30 : Search for the contact: The Truth is Out there.
Football is cancelled. It’s raining here. I’ve decided to do a sort of real time commentary of the news as it comes in through the ether. Just checked di-ve.com and there is no sign of any live streaming of One TV or any other TV. In any case I doubt there will be real time reporting on TV. The best bet is the radio. Switched to Super One Radio (does it still have that name? That’s what shows up on MediaPlayer anyway). Irony of ironies there’s Eminem singing – the song? – “Cleaning out my closet”.
“Sorry mama. Never meant to hurt you. Never meant to make you cry. But tonight I’m cleaning out my closet.”
Roderick lisps on. “La Speranza” by Amedeo Minghi is somewhere down the line on the playlist. No sign of any contact with Hamrun. Time to switch station. Radio 101 – mediaplayer message: Host is unreachable: Trust the Nationalists to go incommunicado.
18:35 Contact Established: Houston we have a star in sight
Maltastar promises the minute by minute experience and since this is normally afforded to website readers used to following football matches the football Jargon is inevitable: “Minute by minute Conference to elect Labour leader kicks off”. Voting process expected to begin at 1840 hrs. Labour has just spent 8 minutes without a leader since Alfred Sant’s leadership officially ended at 1830.
18:42 We have visual contact
http://www.Freetv.com finally leads to a good stream of One TV. Adverts galore – the guy of the pain relief is still on. One has to bear in mind that any streaming TV station is probably five to seven minutes late but still…. no sign of any political program. Adverts over – some idiot chatting in an effeminate voice about how to make Pastini Mandorla. Guy (?) cannot speak, cannot speak Maltese… what the flying freak? For crying out loud. I wish I could spell phonetically – the guy speaks of assenza tal-lewz… is-siKriet tal-lewz – almonds (to rhyme with Raymond) and Man-dorla to rhyme with inkorla. Jeezus wept.
18:49 Voting has started
It’s 18:49 here but Maltastar reports that voting started bang on time in the headquarters. First to vote were the five contestants. 895 to go I guess. Claire adds a comment as I type – pray tell me what is One TV showing? Checking Super One radio just in case but it’s still full of what the Beastie Boys would call “Some old bullshit”. What’s the use of parties owning a radio station if they don’t bloody well use it? Roderick has just announced (at 18:56) that Super One will establish a link with the conference at 22:15. Phew… we’ll see. I would have thought counting 900 votes does not take more than one hour – but I am sure I am missing some info on the logistics – maybe voting time is long?
18:58 The Stars
Nothing to follow so we speculate. Here’s the star signs of the candidates : four out of five are born in consecutive zodiac signs – Abela being the odd one out (he’s doomed). Bartolo is a Libran, Falzon a Scorpio, Coleiro a Sagittarian and Muscat a Capricorn. Abela just makes it into Gemini and misses Taurus by a day. Interesting isn’t it? I’d vote for a Scorpio with my eyes closed – but then I’m biased and choosing people on the basis of star signs does not really work – just look at that eejit Domenech.
19:03 All quiet on the Labour front
I don’t expect any earth shifting news at this point. I doubt Maltastar will gift us with some form of exit poll (kummissjoni tad-dixxiplina and all that). I guess best thing to do is to go pack my suitcase since I have no time tomorrow. I hear it’s raining in Malta too – trust my luck. Some geezer is reading out all the matches of Euro 2008 informing the very interested listeners (One radio) as to which referee has been appointed for which match. Looks like the English will have someone representing them after all – a referee. Claire re. your tiger comment I think “kollu kollu” means taking a dump too. Need I get more specific? Off to pack – have no time to do so tomorrow so I’ll take advantage of this lull. Back in around 30 mins maybe.
19:26 No Man is an Island
Cheated. Came back for a quick peek. Just learnt (Maltastar) that voting is also taking place in Gozo. It should end at 20.00 over there. Just in time for the news then. Jolly good.
19.39 News
Watching One news. The clip summarising Alfred Sant’s political career cannot be commented upon. Not exactly the best swan song but that was to be expected. So now I know – voting ends at 10pm and One TV will follow the counting live. That means that it is all over for now – J’accuse will be back at 10 to follow the outcome. Till then – happy mandorla.
j'accuse 
Jacques – am not getting the “almond/Jesmond/Raymond” guy and I have a TV on. Too tense for words
Ok now – we have visuals …of pastini tal-mandorla guy – we are enjoined to sprinkle lots of icing sugar on them
Mandorla Man receives phone call from Elinor who is cooking something using tomatoes and who has just won the “Cooking with Peter” cookbook. Now on to commercial break….
On TVM, Pablo (of Deal or No Deal fame) is interviewing a panel beater with spikey hair who dreams of driving down from America in a huge car and who informs us that a tiger peed on him (ghamlet il-bzonnijiet taghha fuqi ….kollu, kollu)
Back to One TV. Aaron (co-cook with Mandorla Man) has just produced Chocolate brownies and Peter (of the book fame) is whipping up the chocolate sauce. A yoghurt and orange sauce has also been mentioned. I realise that this is not the wall-to-wall coverage of the MLP leadership race that people were expecting…..but this is what we’re getting
Telghet……il-krema ta Aaron.
Actually, I like this better. Give me cookies any day to scenes of delegates lining up.
Hargu it-Tuna Sorrentina li ssir bl-“islajsis” ta t-tonn….before your cookies Fausto
Black smoke coming out of Red House (or is it St. Luke’s). Non habemus Lijder yet.
“The J’Accuse’s: REAL TIME COMMENTARY – Labour Leadership Contest” is featured on Maltamedia: The Maltese Blogosphere
– Nominate blog post of the month –
On another Maltese channel ITV Shopping the programme X’Se Nixtri LLum makes no mention of what the Labour consumer wants. No Muscat Must-haves, Gorgeous George, Make-it Michael, Vote Varist or Marie-Louise. Instead Carlo Borg Bonaci ignores consumer demand and tells us to go to Beaver and buy gold handbags.
Fausto et al please dont get carried away and start thinking lecherous thoughts in conjunction with the leadership race. Beaver is a shop….and they sell bags… really.
Jacques and anybody else interested in the Labour leader contest should start playing The Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” over and over again. All the Maltese TV stations are resolutely ignoring the event. One TV is showing something called SongLink with semi-country music (I like country but for everything there is a time and a season etc). NET is exhorting us to vote…for some beauty queen and over on TVM there’s something about “kunjati”.
Friends inside the Red House are completely incomunicado….in the meantime we ponder about the plus and minus points of the gold Beaver bags
any odds on the kummissjoni tad-dixxiplina decreeing that all votes be burned for displaying overt bias in favour of contenders? There will be no news before 11.00 local while the the beef may possibly huff in 24 hrs time… plenty time for mandorla and cookies 🙂
Danny Attard is voicing the very real possibility that the Kummissjoni Ta Dixxiplina might spring into action once again – nothing escapes the attention of those ever vigilant men on the Vigilance Board. Mandorla Man has vanished with the mandorle and brownies.
I don’t want to leave out the commentary on Smash…naturally not about the MLP thing but an interview with another elected official who has been in office since I was 2. We’re talking about Dr. Joe Mifsud who has been head honcho at the MFA for years and years and years…maybe it’s the power of incumbency.
Wow, this is really like a papal conclave which, it is said, whoever enters a pope comes out a cardinal. Bad news for Joe Muscat I suppose.
Labour delegates still holed up in the Red House. Overcooked mandorle cookies are being used to keep the puffs of black smoke coming out of the red chimney (or maybe they’re using those surveys and polls which were never shown to Michael Falzon). There are unconfirmed rumours that medialink journalists who have been tunnelling over from Pieta Headquarters are now within a few metres of the MLP voting hall and we might soon have a kollegament by Amanda featuring a Labour delegate with turn-ups or sporting some sartorial disaster which will be gleefully commented upon.
Voting started at 6.30pm
I understand that the mlp statooth says that voting should last four for hours
that means that voting stops at 10.30pm
then there must be eome process of vote sniffing and someone with an inch tape measuring the length and breath of each vote
we should therefour know the 2 names for final run in (unless someone gets the 50 plus one…unlikely)not before 11
now i am not so sure if that be 11 pm or friday am
11 is of course as optimistic as a 25th august christmas bash…
As Tullio De Piscopo sang (Italian singer who looked like our Cisju), it’s going to be “Andamento Lento. Back to the topical coverage being given to the next leader of the free world on local TV. The NET people haven’t made it to the Red House yet, so they’re giving us beautiful girls in bikinis and a smart tattoo posing for a photographer. And no , it’s not Amanda with the tattoo. That august channel TVM shows us John Bundy on a bed with Frankie Quattromani (Ray, when will you realise that bleeped out words and naked women with pasties on their nipples are not that funny?). ONE shows us ON D ROAD (like STR8 2 D point but about cars) . The infamous Labour leaks have all dried up and we don’t know anything about the outcome.
Times online website reports that all contestants are feeling extremely “serene”. Joseph is serene, George is calm, Varist is relaxed, Michael is cool (but slightly excited)and Marie Louise is not at all stressed. There hasn’t been so much serenity over at Hamrun since 1996. Good for them.
Readers of another news item however are not so calm. Those reading about MEPA giving the go-ahead for the Mistra monstrosity (no not Spin Valley and JPO – please keep up) – are incensed. Apparently Andrew Calleja said that his MEPA had “contained urban sprawl”. Loud guffaws were heard echoing round the island. Later MEPA approved a high rise monstrosity on the Mistra ridge. Welcome to the postelection PN world.
More unconfirmed and probably totally baseless rumours that ortune-teller Joda has been invited to sit on the Xarabank panel of experts about the MLP leadership contest. For those of you who haven’t kept up, this is an example of a creative “postmodern programme” (Fr. Joe Borg’s words not mine). We hope that Joda will reveal things of great import – such as whether the future Labour leader “oozes charm and charisma” and whether he thinks mothers are important. These were the earth-shattering issues that were reprted on by journalists covering Gonzi before the election. The charm and charisma quote is lifted verbatim and does not refer to George Clooney.
Will someone tell the ONE TV crew to stop wandering off and film something marginally more interesting than that white haired guy’s balding patch and the non-Brad Pitt-like behinds of those important officials circling round the ballot boxes? We’re trying to make this interesting but we need some back-up…..the background muzak is getting better but I think I’ll go back to watching MFA magazine or Dr. Rey cut and stitch tums and thighs….those boxes can only do so much to stir interest in viewers