There speaks the albatross round the party's neck – again
If only somebody would corral Tonio Borg safely and put a zipper with a padlock on his mouth. Every time he speaks, he reminds us of the Nationalist Party’s extremely off-putting, right-wing, semi-fascistic heritage. He’s deputy party leader and so speaks in an official capacity, but really those views are his own, like when he abused of his ministerial powers and office to write to organisations nationwide in an attempt at getting them to support Paul Vincenti’s whacko petition. Or when he grabbed a microphone and marched down to Bay Street with Gift of Life. He doesn’t really know how much damage he does.
A lot of the Nationalist Party’s support now comes from people like me, whose politics are liberal and who vote Nationalist because over the last two decades the party has moved towards liberalism and away from the conservative right. The thorny issue of divorce remains, and there is a bit too much religious chest-thumping, even though the party is riddled with people whose marriages have fallen apart and who are pogguti, as Tonio Borg might put it. But apart from that the Nationalist Party is nowhere near what it was. If it were, I would have a crisis of conscience every election day, forced to choose between the lesser of two evils as I am not the type to abdicate responsibility in choosing a prime minister, leaving the decision to others.
Tonio Borg is now very much the odd one out and he fails to realise it. He is not conservative, but right-wing. He has right-wing views on immigration, people from different cultures, religion, order in society, the police, the army, marriage, women…the list is endless.
He does not attract new electoral support but repels it. Too many people fail to realise that he is an anomaly within the party because he is the other half of its public face. Lawrence Gonzi is religious, is confused about divorce – for reasons, it transpires, that are not entirely to do with religion – but he does not come across as repressive, right-wing, intolerant, suspicious of those who are different, and illiberal. Tonio Borg does.
He is just too ‘Italianate’ for my taste, but in all the wrong ways. He comes across as though he’d be more than happy in a world of jack-boots and salutes, in a village where everyone looks the same, behaves the same, says the rosary on the doorstep, goes to church on Sunday and never questions anything. As for that accent and manner of speaking, which appear to have been modelled on those of a former Nationalist politician I regard with little more than contempt (because neither of his brothers speaks that way and they all grew up in the same household), it gives away rather a lot about him.
I’m beginning to wonder why Tonio Borg campaigned for EU membership, when he thinks that foreigners will “damage our social fabric” if they’re aren’t Catholic, white or caffe-latte.
Like all intolerant people, his intelligence stops just short of what it should be. Really intelligent people are almost never intolerant, because their intelligence allows them to see the failings of that position. If Tonio Borg were truly bright and well-informed, he wouldn’t have replied to a question about giving protected tenancy rights to gay couples and unmarried couples with an outburst about conservatism and Christian Democracy. Instead, he would have used the facts.
He would have pointed out that nowhere in the democratic west, despite widespread misconceptions to the contrary, do people who are not married to each other have automatic rights over property, tenancy, pensions, and the rest. This is a myth, put about by silly, desperate wishful thinkers. Marriage was conceived and exists for the sole, express purpose of given a couple rights over each other and over each other’s property and privileges. So it stands to reason that without marriage there are no such rights. Gay couples acquire these rights through civil partnership. Cohabiting couples NEVER, ANYWHERE have rights over property, tenancy or pensions.
Let me give you one example that I know of through direct experience. A Maltese woman left her Maltese husband in the early 1960s, and went to live in England with a Royal Navy officer, who was also married and with children. They both divorced their spouses. They lived together for more than 40 years, and had children together. Then he died. By this time she was seriously unwell and had lost her memory. When her grown-up children applied for a naval pension on her behalf, they were told to produce a marriage certificate, despite a 40-year life together and the presence of offspring. They could trace neither the marriage certificate nor any record of the marriage, and realised that their parents might never have married after all. Their mother is in no position to tell them whether she was married to their father or not. She has been denied that pension – no marriage certificate, no pension.
In Britain, cohabiting couples, whether gay, straight or siblings, do not have the property, tenancy or inheritance rights of married couples. For that, they need a marriage certificate or civil partnership, which means that siblings are always going to have a problem. There is no such thing as common-law marriage. That is an urban legend.
Tonio Borg could have said all this. Instead he made a right-wing kawlata and cheesed off a lot of people, including me – again. The man is an anachronism, and it’s about time he realised this.
The Times – 26 January
PN is not liberal – Tonio Borg
Christian PereginDeputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg passionately defended the conservative ideals of the Nationalist Party yesterday during a political activity where he spoke about rent reform. “The Nationalist Party is not a liberal party; we are Christian Democrats. We will only protect those who deserve protection,” he said, referring to the government’s rent reform proposals which have so far excluded protection of cohabiting and gay couples. The Labour Party has criticised the reform for not catering for “today’s realities”, leaving such couples without a right to inherit the properties from their partners.
Speaking at a political activity in Balzan yesterday, Dr Borg brought up the issue again, saying that the Nationalist Party had a “social conscience” it had to abide by.
His words echoed the speech he gave in Parliament recently when responding to Labour’s criticism – a speech that was described by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo as “offensive, cynical and derisory”. Dr Borg had said the aim of the rent reform was to protect “those who deserved protection” by restricting who can inherit the rented property.
“That’s all we need now! After we’ve finally decided to limit inheritance to married couples and children, now we are expected to extend this protection to those who decide to go and live with someone of the same sex,” he said in Parliament. He argued that restricting inheritance to married couples would help to cut out abuse, whereas with gay or cohabitating couples things would get tricky because there is no documentation involved. “Do you think we should create a register for those who are cohabitating?” he suggested sarcastically, addressing the Labour Party.
“So first you say you are against gay marriage, and then you say that the land owners should not only have to deal with married tenants but even those who went abroad, to Holland, to marry someone of the same sex and then returned to Malta expecting to be recognised by the landowner…”
Writing in Malta Today, Dr Bartolo said yesterday that, if the government had kept its promise to establish rights and obligations between couples who cohabitated, this would not have been an issue.
He added that Dr Borg’s “sarcastic and cynical tone on gay couples was in stark contrast to what the PN told gay people during last year’s electoral campaign”. PN MEP candidate Edward Demicoli says he is in favour of “the same civil rights” for cohabitating and gay couples, his stance highlighting a long-standing ideological divide within the Nationalist Party on such issues.
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Fact is, Tonio Borg is not an insignificant backbencher. He is the Deputy Leader of the PN and the Deputy Prime Minister. In a not so unrealistic scenario, if something had to happen to Dr. Gonzi or he would resign for whatever reason, Tonio Borg would be our Prime Minister. This alone is enough for any liberal or libertarian to think twice before voting PN again!
Well said Daphne!
I was totally shocked with his outburst. I’m totally with Mister Bartolo on this one. Dr Borg might be attracting those little old ladies who can’t let go of their rosary beads, but he’s definitely repelling individuals like me. It’s not just about repulsion; his words are basically about EXCLUSION – “Jekk ma taqbilx, dan mhux il-partit tieghek”. I thought politics of exclusion was not trendy anymore.
Fil-komma din, Tonio – or as he clearly wants me to say – PN.
‘Anachronism’ ?!…Change ? He can’t. Sartre would define such a personal view of life ….as the attraction; “la passione inutile” la voglia di sentirsi Dei. Immutabile nei tempi. It’s the human condition after all.
To hell with the traditional “Religio E Patria” motto that appeals only to the “right-wing” and people like Tonio Borg who together with the absolute minority of the voting public “has right-wing views on immigration, people from different cultures, religion, order in society, the police, the army, marriage, women”.
I am sure that with its landslide electoral win of a year ago, the PN can well afford to alienate such people come election time.
Flimkien Kollox Possibli
This is a great article. Prosit, Daphne.
This must be emphasized:
“Marriage was conceived and exists for the sole, express purpose of given a couple rights over each other and over each other’s property and privileges. So it stands to reason that without marriage there are no such rights.”
[Daphne – Some people can’t see the wood for the trees. The solution is not rights for cohabiting couples, whether they’re gay or straight (those rights would be by virtue of a form of marriage), but divorce, which permits remarriage, and civil partnership for gay couples.]
Ronnie said: “This alone is enough for any liberal or libertarian to think twice before voting PN again!”
Well, I consider myself to be a hardcore libertarian but I still voted PN last election even though I was well aware of their conservatism. What Tonio Borg said is really nothing new – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if most, if not all, the PN members of parliament shared his views.
This is very unfortunate, however the other options are infinitely worse.
[Daphne – No, most PN MPs do not share his views. His is just the loud voice on the front line. He stands out precisely because he is an oddity, so out of tune with the times and so out of touch with the party he helps lead.]
“I didn’t get where I am today by being liberal” with apologies to CJ in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
Tonio Borg must have backing from within the party to find himself in the position he is in today. The PN needs to have the courage of its convictions and get rid of elements that only bring shame to its newly found ideals.
Daphne,
You may be right in stating that Dr. Borg could have made a faux pas in speaking like that in public, and your explanation is spot on.
However, I disagree with your notion of PN’s’right-wing, semi-fascistic heritage’.
The party’s ideologies came around well before fascism saw the light of the day. And even though you had people like Carlo Mallia who was a fascist in ideals, these people left the party before Italy joined the war. They had no place in PN anyway.
The ‘fascist’ (or semi-fascist) tag is a fallacy, and it has been clearly proven by historians. With the same reasoning you may say that the old MLP was a Communist-style regime, when it was clearly a socialist regime which flirted with communist countries in their dealings.
Aside from the divorce debate (which I do not agree with him on), Tonio Borg is genuine in his convictions and is well-read. Whoever knows him closely will testify this. He had the courage to speak out in parliament on the memory of the war internees, one of the most disgusting episodes of our history.
Perhaps, one has to ask – who was responsible for most of the trouble and hatred within our island in the 20th century? The Labour Party? The British authorities? Neither of these two.
The answer is simple – the Constitutionals, the sycophants who won elections through the divide, blackmail and conquer strategy. The ones who the British wrongly put their trust in.
Mabel brought respectability to their party, and that contributed to things calming down eventually, and certain factions decided to infiltrate the Nationalist Party in the 60s/70s.
History and the truth cannot be erased.
[Daphne – I think you’re quite wrong there, and it’s certainly not a matter of who is most responsible for most of the trouble and hatred in our island in the 20th century (though my answer on that score would be Mintoff and his 1970s Labour Party and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and his 1980s continuation of that regime). The Progressive Constitutional Party was supported by that segment of the electorate not catered for by the left-wing Labour/Workers’ Party or the right-wing Nationalist Party. It may come as a surprise, but there were people around at the time who disapproved of the Catholic Church’s stranglehold on Maltese society (while still believing in the religion itself, and practising it), and who were all for free enterprise, personal liberty and respect for institutions and the rule of law. The PCP, in the context of the times, was the closest thing Malta ever had to a liberal party. It tended to be supported mainly by a certain stratum of Maltese society that rejected right-wing values and religious control, but which at the same time felt uncomfortable with the Workers/Labour Party because they were employers or high-level civil servants rather than ‘workers’. Having come from a family that was PCP through and through, perhaps I am in a better position to explain this. It is often mistakenly assumed that people like that supported the PCP because they were pro-British, but in reality you must go one step further back, and ask yourself why some people felt more comfortable with the British way of life while others felt more comfortable with the Italian way of life. It is commonly assumed that it was all about politics, but this ignores the fact that political belief usually stems from something else: desire for a certain way of life over another one. A lot of people who were pro-British were actually pro-British liberal values, and if they were anti-Italian, they were actually anti- what contemporary Italian values stood for. You can see the legacy of that even in our own times. Why do I think, reason, speak and write the way I do? It’s almost certainly because I come from that liberal political background. And I am definitely more comfortable with the British value system than I am with the Italian value system. By the same token, when I hear outrageously fascist comments I am left in no doubt that the people making them come from ‘old’ Nationalist families, and after a bit of enquiry I generally find that this is the case. How can I tell people with a Labour heritage? Chippy, bitter talk and a bad attitude. These are wide generalisations and I’m sometimes proved wrong in my guess, but then it’s the exceptions which prove the rule.]
@ Scerri S
“…those little old ladies who can’t let go of their rosary beads …”
Just for the record, the VIRGIN MARY has made 15 promises for those who recite the rosary. I bet that few are aware of these :-! For further reference – http://www.catholic-church.org/apcarmel/rosary.htm
@ Daphne
It is true that cohabiting couples in most countries are not granted the same rights as married couples. However in the UK for example, a gay couple can form a civil partnership and divorced couples can remarry. In the case of many Maltese cohabiting couples, they are in this situation not out of choice but due to the lack of opportunity to remarry in cases where one of the partners has been previously married or no possibility of forming any sort of legally recognised union in the case of gay couples.
Had the lady in your example been Ingrid from Sweden and not Cettina from Malta, the couple could have easily got married.
With politicians like Tonio occupying high positions in Government the situation is unlikely to change. plus ca change!
[Daphne – Please think clearly. The solution is not ‘rights’ for cohabiting couples (how in god’s name would that be different to marriage?) but divorce which would allow them to marry, and civil partnership in the case of gay couples. When people are in a position to marry, and don’t marry all the same, it’s because they don’t want to. How then, in the name of all that’s commonsense, are these colander-heads insisting on foisting duties, rights and obligations on cohabiting couples by default, when they haven’t married precisely to avoid that situation?]
I guess Tonio Borg is worst than Anglu Farrugia because Anglu doesn’t appear anywhere and that’s a plus for the PL whilst Tonio Borg is all the time saying nonsense and is making the road for the PN much harder than it actually is to win another election.
@DCG
This belief you have that most intelligent people are tolerant is another fixation of yours. Some of the best minds such as Descartes and Gauss and Newton were quite intolerent: without them the world would be a very different place, especially Descartes! Intelligence actually means more understanding not tolerance.
[Daphne – They lived in a different era, and while they may be considered intolerant by today’s standards, they were not intolerant by the standards of their own day. The most intelligent people in history were invariably at odds with the autocracy of the times. I do not have fixations, but perceptions which I try to pass on to others. One such perception is that lack of intelligence/ignorance and intolerance go hand-in-hand while intelligence is usually associated with insight and understanding of situations and the wider picture, which is why it is extremely unusual for truly intelligent persons to be also intolerant. It is not intelligence alone that led to some of the greatest discoveries of all time, but intelligence predicated on tolerance and an open mind: hence Galileo Galilei thought nothing of defying the church’s established opinion to arrive at a scientific truth. Another example made the news a few days ago – it turns out from recent research that Charles Darwin’s interest in evolution was provoked by contemporaneous debates on slavery and on whether black Africans were ‘half-human’ or lesser beings, which justified their being bought and sold as chattels. He was anti-slavery. What the news reports didn’t mention is that Charles Darwin’s inherited fortune made his leisured study possible, and he inherited that fortune from none other than his maternal grandfather Josiah Wedgwood, who had become fabulously wealthy because his brilliant scientific mind, coupled with a potter’s heritage and skill, had developed a new glaze for porcelain. The news reports failed to mention, too, that Josiah Wedgwood was a renowned anti-slavery campaigner who designed and produced the famous Wedgwood medallion depicting an African man bent in chains with the legend ‘Am I not a man and brother?’ I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both Wedgwood and his grandson were anti-slavery at a time when most people were pro-slavery. I think their innate and genetic brilliance made it impossible for them not to see slavery for what it was, despite the received wisdom of the times, and once they saw it for what it was, they couldn’t but do something about it.]
I think that the higher echelons at the PN should be wise enough to politely sideline Tonio Borg. ‘Modern’ politics and policies is going to be one of the battle cries of the MLP in the forthcoming election. Joseph Muscat has been banking on his ‘young’ age to project a ‘progressive and moderate’ party. Tonio Borg’s revolting speech would be more appropriate for an AN activity.
Let’s face it. Borg has been a government minister for the past 13 years. Is there – at least – one single decision he took that he will be remembered for? Yes, the (mis)handling of the illegal immigration issue and his Gift of Life antics.
He must stick to what he does best – university lectures, and believe me, he’s damn good at that!
I’m not surprised at Tonio Borg’s statement. After all he is being honest as the Nationalist Party is a Christian Democrat party and can never be liberal on social issues such as divorce and abortion. At least he had the courage to call a spade a spade. All the poppycock on this site about the PN’s liberal stance is all balderdash. Roamer’s Column must be delighted!
[Daphne – A conservative, right-wing party would never have fought so hard for Malta to join the EU, still less the Eurozone. It would not have broadened the welfare state, widened university entrance to all (with payment to go there), nor introduced so many of the legislative measures of the past 20 years which, elsewhere, would have been associated with the left, the centre-left, or liberal parties. Tonio Borg’s politics are those of Azzjoni Nazzjonali, minus the whacko factor.]
This will make Tonio Borg happy: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090126/local/controversial-play-banned.
I’m sure that it’s in line with his vision for Catholic Malta.
Tonio Borg comes across as living in a time-warp. I knew him at school and even then he seemed older than his years. I totally agree with the assessment that he is too ‘Italianate’ in his outlook, for all the wrong reasons. He hankers after a different time and place, and can’t seem to get to grips with living in a modern, secular and inclusive society.
His comments illustrate the need for a civil partnership law to enable Maltese gay men and women feel valued and worth ‘protecting’ and not ostracised and denigrated, as Tonio Borg is only too happy to do.
Incidentally I believe that the UK government has committed itself to introducing legislation soon to give so called ‘common law marriages’ some rights and protection.
[Daphne – Actually, what’s on the cards in the UK is something different, and the prime minister mentioned the importance of doing it here too: giving rights to those who have shared a home for years, whatever their status, even if they are siblings, parent/child, or just friends who are not and never were in a sexual relationship. The problem came to the fore in Britain when there was a sudden spate of news stories about siblings who share a home all their lives into old age. When one dies, the other is forced to sell the home to pay taxes, and ends up with not enough capital to buy another place. In this case, and I imagine (because it follows) also with cohabiting couples, what you will get on the death of the other party is usufruct. Aside from that, the state cannot grant rights to cohabitees for the simple reason that this would constitute marriage. That’s what marriage is in its civil form. So they might as well go ahead and marry. Also, the state cannot grant rights to cohabitees by default, because they might be cohabiting to avoid those rights and obligations – so the state cannot impose.]
Dream on. It’s the Year of the Ox.
************** News Flash ************** Dr Tonio Borg has just been appointed Chief of Moral Police for the Theocracy of Malta.
In his acceptance speech he announced that he is, in turn, appointing Mr Paul Vincenti as his deputy. They will be working together to ensure that no other species will threaten the Maltese fabric which is well known for its Christian behaviour, which includes domestic violence, rampant adultery, xenophobia, lack of love for thy neighbour, and others.
He also added that the Maltese national sport – tax evasion – will be safeguarded and taught to young children in schools. However, the rules of the game are set to change as teams (even at professional level) will not be allowed to make any foreign signings. This is the sport of the Maltese, by the Maltese, for the Maltese.
Sources close to the force revealed that the Moral Police have been instructed already by Dr Borg to make unannounced visits to houses and confiscate any material (printed, electronic, or otherwise) that offends his moral code. Dr Borg is also expected to extend thought-crime procedures to impure thoughts and liberal thinking.
More updates on this appointment will follow shortly . . . ..
What’s the point, Daphne? Both our parties are authoritarian and the liberal ones are run by loonies, like Alpha.
The Maltese just love to be dominated (looking at history and the current PN and PL fanatics), but I think there will come a day when a good liberal party will come out & be worth electing to parliament.
I voted PN just to keep Dr.Sant out, and I think it’s the saddest, but most rational, thing I’ve ever done.
I wouldn’t expect the PN to go for gay rights or cohabitation, because they are a Christian Democratic party and it would be irrational for them to do so. I’m in favor of liberal ideas such as abortion and divorce, but I wouldn’t wait around for theocratic Gonzi to legalise them not even if the majority is in favor, because it’s the job of the PL as a quasi-socialist party to do this stuff (which is also why they are incompetent).
Tonio Borg belongs in AN with Josie.
The Nationalist Party is a (successful) election-winning machine. Period. Principles, be they left or right, count for nothing. It is a permanent, grand coalition of conservatives and liberals, from fanatical Catholics to downright abortionists, who huddle together so that Malta does not get a Labour government.
In any case, when the PN used to mesmerise me in the far off 80s I remember the “Kap” proclaiming VALURI and PRINCIPJI DEMOKRATICI INSARA. But now Daphne says that the PN “has changed”. OK. Fine. But WHEN exactly? In which Kunsill Generali was a change in the PN’s principles discussed?
But then again, does the PN respect its officials, after all? Maybe its “grey emininences” DO change policy as they deem fit for the sake of winning elections.
[Daphne – Albert, I’m going to do it again and don’t get cross this time: people who are pro-choice in matters of abortion are not ‘abortionists’. Abortionists are doctors who perform abortions. I don’t think anyone in the Nationalist Party is doing that, though I do remember around 30 years ago that a Labour minister did so clandestinely – or so it was whispered.]
Daphne
I agree with you in most of your posts-but this post surprised me to be honest. I have been reading your posts for a very long time but this is the first time I am commenting.
The PN is a centre-right party, not a centre-left. It is the PN’s duty to speak out in favour of conservative ideals. The fact that the PN was vociferously in favour of EU membership does not mean a single thing. Even countries you called fascists wanted EU accession.
Tonio should be commended for sticking to his guns and for having the courage to say what he really believes in.
I am sorry to say but how can you say that intelligent people are tolerant, when you said these words:
“He is just too ‘Italianate’ for my taste, but in all the wrong ways. ”
So if another person says something against other nationalities-you call him racist-then you go on posting post after post against a certain nationality. Then we call other people fascists and racists. Is this a one sided discussion where all that comes out of these posts is right and all the other people say is wrong? What is this?
Tonio is much more intelligent than you can imagine. Anyone who knows him will tell you that he is well read, well informed and knows the country’s political and Constitutional history by heart.
However lately, there is a growing number of people who wants the political parties and the Church to change. They want the Church and the political parties to change certain things in order to suit them. This is not a pick and choose situation-there are different parties with different ideals, and you choose the align yourself with the one you feel most comfortable with. Otherwise what is the use of democracy if all parties integrate popular changes? It would result in identical or very similar parties.
This is my personal opinion obviously-I will tolerate other persons’ opinions.
[Daphne – I don’t know where to begin…. so instead I’m off to have supper. “I will tolerate other persons’ opinions”. When somebody says that, they give the game away: they’re intolerant. It’s the equivalent of saying “I am not a racist but…”. You also seem to be confusing wide reading and study with intelligence. The two are not interchangeable. Just a quick point before I dash off to make a risotto with duck left over from yesterday’s lunch: political parties are there to represent people, and not vice versa. Hence, the parties should be made in the electorate’s image, and not the other way round – unless they are reforming parties. If the Nationalist Party’s voter base wants the party to move with the times, then move with the times it should. The Nationalist Party’s liberal voter base – and it’s very large, make no mistake – has nowhere else to go, because the Labour Party is much too backward and operates like a cooperative of clowns and Alternattiva Demokratika is intolerant, autocratic and left-wing.]
First of all-I didn’t slam any other person’s beliefs-so yes, I am tolerant of course.
Regarding your claim that I confused wide reading and studying with intelligence-I did not confuse them. It is a bit hard to confuse the two when a Harvard graduate provides a free show to the country in a top political position for 16 years (and even up to very recently). So I know that they are interchangeable. When I said that Tonio Borg is intelligent I really meant the word. This can be confirmed by the fact that he is very rarely (seriously) criticised by the opposition, despite the fact that he occupies such an important post in the PN. He rarely gives them food to chew on (bar maybe on this occasion and maybe a few others), contrary to others from the same camp.
I agree with you that the PN’s voter base has a lot of liberal people in it, especially the younger generation. (I am not saying that there aren’t liberal-thinking individuals in the older generations – naturally there are a lot, but since I form part of the younger generation, I can only vouch for that)
However if these people who are voting for the PN are doing so only because there is no real decent alternative (as you put it – I agree with you) then they cannot accuse the PN because they do not agree with some of its basic principles. If you join them, you are part of them.
And this happens a lot. Many people only think of the fun of carcades, mass meetings, and maybe personal improvement and advancement, (which is important) but most of the people at mass meetings do not even know how the PN originated and what its beliefs are, and of other centre-right parties in every democratic country. The same, if not worse, happens on the opposite side, with the Labour supporters of course.
Finally, I do seriously think that the PN changed much over the years, through the EU membership, the vast amount of foreign investment encouraged by their moves, etc. They did not remain backwards at all; if anything the Labour Party did. The PN did not seem to be afraid of new challenges. That is why I think that they moved with the times.
However it does not mean that they have to change their beliefs.
@David, you wrote:
“Tonio is much more intelligent than you can imagine. Anyone who knows him will tell you that he is well read, well informed and knows the country’s political and Constitutional history by heart.”
Even a parrot can learn the Constitution by heart. Knowing history doesn’t make you intelligent, just as getting a degree won’t make you more intelligent.
However, Tonio Borg has a spine, something which other MPs sadly lack. I mean, okay, you can be the best philosopher or brainiac in the world, but you’re not going to get far if you don’t challenge the world with your ideas.
@Graham C
You have to draw the line somewhere. This is a like an impending landslide. You say, it wouldn’t matter if you cut a single tree off the slope. But then everyone would want to cut a tree off the slope, which will weaken the soil and cause a landslide. Same thing with this.
Bil-qatra il-qatra, xi darba, ha tinfaqa il-garra.
[Daphne – And then our social fabric will be torn and ripped. Imagine if our forefathers had said that. What would we be? Ah now, let’s see: Muslims called Said, Busuttil, Buhagiar, Zahra and not a single Christian, blonde or red-haired person among us, still less people called Grogan or Warrington or Garzia or Toledo or…]
@ Tonio’s attackers:I heard his speech on radio yesterday. When he said that the PN is not a liberal party, he was saying it in the sense that the new rent reform would not be a free for all and that people who need help will get it. But the government would not intervene on commercial leases. His main ‘attack’ was on the LP which said it was voting in favour of the Rent Law but with some reservations. He also challenged the LP about its stand on requisitioned houses which were turned into MLP clubs. Nowhere in his Sunday speech at Balzan did he mention co-habiting couples .
Christian Peregin misreported or misinterpreted the ‘social conscience’ part which clearly referred to people who would need help under the new law. Surely he was not referring to gay couples or co-habiting couples. That was comment.
Someone is questioning Dr Borg’s abilities. Just to mention one: he is the one who gave rights to victims of crime. Tonio is in the right party (no pun intended) it is not a liberal party. It is affiliated with other Demo-Christian parties in Europe; I think it is the EPP. PN is Centre Right not Liberal.
[Daphne – What’s that saying? A rose by any other name…When assessing whether a political party is left, right or upside down, what you look at is its track record, policies and pronouncements, and not its name or its self-declared position on the political spectrum. The political parties of the communist world, or what is left of it, like to call themselves the People’s Democratic this and the People Progressive that, when they are anything but. Even Gaddafi does it. As for our very own Labour Party, it calls itself socialist and left-wing and is affiliated with the European Socialists, yet it is right-wing, xenophobic, conservative and regressive. What’s in a name? Absolutely nothing at all. If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck, even if the duck insists on calling itself Roger the Rat.]
Daphne, the point is that you and “in-naghag ta’ Bendu” or “chicken Licken’s followers” are attacking someone on “detto del detto”. Mr Peregin misunderstood the speech and led his readers to something different from what Dr Borg said and you built your attack against Dr Borg on what the journalist wrote.
I don’t see Dr Borg as PM but I find him to be a good minister of foreign affairs and one who can challenge anyone with good arguments about political ideology, but I don’t agree with him about entrenching laws in our Constitution.
[Daphne – I’ll ring the reporter in the morning, but I very much doubt he misreported Tonio Borg’s words, which is why they sound so very authentic and true to form.]
Ifhem, what I really know about our forefathers, is that they paid in blood to draw that line in 1565. Had they not the stomach to fight, we would be as you said Daphne.
[Daphne – You really don’t know your country’s history, do you? Though it has to be said, neither does the president, with that Christian-since-St-Paul spiel that he gave his most recent interviewer.]
In-Nazzjon tal-lum:
“Hu rrefera ghar-riformi attwali f’diversi setturi, fosthom fis-suq tal-kera, ghax il-Gvern ghandu l-boxxla
socjali tieghu f’postha u jrid li ssir gustizzja mas-sidien, waqt li jipprotegi lil min verament ikun haqqu.”
All the PL need to do to win the next election is make the introduction of divorce a plank of their platform. Tonio Borg is not helping his party’s chances with his statements.
Dear Daphne
One of the reasons that Labour was against EU membership is due the loss of “control” in managing the economy. As EU members we have to abide by the monetary policy of the ECB for example. Another argument was subsidies; everyone knows that in Malta Labour was the party that used this system, most contrary to the PN. In fact, the PN have always campaigned for removal of subsidies. As far as I know these are all issues related to the old left if anything surely not right-wing.
Maybe they also used some xenophobic and conservative statements like when they said that many Sicilians will come over – yes that was quite rightist and conservative.
The fact of the matter is that Maltese society generally speaking is leftist and that is why the PN and its allies try to portray it as left and Labour as right-wing.
Talk to any Labourite and ask him/her what type of economy and government, they will prefer and most of them they will go for a leftist government so that they find that cushion to rely on for providing housing, free medicine etc
[Daphne – That’s not left-wing ideology. That’s a dependency culture – very different.]
Having said all this, it is also true that the majority of the Maltese are “staunchly” Catholic and obviously many Labour supporters are also Catholic.
In my opinion, Labour in Malta is quite socially conservative when considering that it is a leftist party. However, one of the main problems of these past years is that it has not been a credible left-wing party operating in a market economy.
That’s the trend all over the world with leftist parties, and the successful ones are those which embraced the capitalist system & free market economy (although they sometimes say otherwise).
John Meilak,
I did not get your analogy, but only because I do not know to what part of my post you are responding. Are your referring to the socialists and divorce? Well, of course, it’s supposed to be their ideology, secular not religious.
Then again I might be going too far in calling Labour socialists, because they appear to be nothing more than a glorified general workers’ union. Think about it: Mintoff’s rule was nothing but an example of a ‘People’s Democracy’ (not a republic) in the best dictatorial tradition.
But if Labour were true ‘Labourites’, they would vote for everything secular in parliament (which they don’t). Take for example the UK and its REAL Labour Party…. how Tony Blair had to hide the fact he was religious …
Hi Daphne
It is both a dependency culture and an extreme leftist ideology.
However, like everything political ideas evolve over time and those who refuse to evolve with it, in my opinion most of the time fail miserably.
John Schembri: Rights are not given, though official recognition of them might be.
It is always a mistake to pigeonhole people and parties within predefined categories because the same word can mean different things to different people in different situations. In Australia, liberal means conservative, in America it means social-democrat (or something akin to north European social-democrats). The old Partito Liberale in Italy was staunchly anti-clerical but right-wing (close to Thatcher in economic policies) while Aldo Moro was a fervent Catholic and close to the Vatican but politically on the left, favouring the inclusion of communists in the Italian government. It is therefore also wrong to automatically equate Catholicism with right-wing politics.
Many political terms like liberal, conservative, socialist, right, left, etc come from the 19th century or earlier and are increasingly anachronistic in today’s world which is no longer dominated by the well-established ideologies of a century ago. They are used over and over in totally different contexts and are practically meaningless because everybody can interpret them as they see fit.
[Daphne – Yes. I’ve just been reading up about how the formation of the Liberal Party in England was caused indirectly by the Irish Potato Famine, which provoked the founder of the Conservative Party, Robert Peel – as prime minister in 1846 – to put forward a bill for the repeal of the Corn Law and the lifting of protective tariffs on the importation of grain. Many within his party opposed the move, and were his fiercest opponents, led by Benjamin Disraeli. The Corn Law was repealed by the House of Commons and the bill was passed even by the House of Lords, but Peel resigned when another of his bills, the Irish Coercion Bill, failed to make it through. His opposite number in the Whig Party, Lord John Russell, formed the new government and became prime minister (and his policies and inaction hastened the tragedy in Ireland). Those within the Conservative (Tory) Party who supported Peel (known as the Peelites) broke away from the Tories and merged with the Whigs and Radicals to form the Liberal Party which had considerable success over the next century or so, though with the emergence of the Labour Party it became gradually the pale shadow that it is today. So in effect, the English Liberal Party was formed out of a passionate belief in free trade and no government interference in the workings of the market. The same Whig/Liberal principles were what informed – to a lesser extent – Malta’s Progressive Constitutional Party, which is one main reason why it was supported by the vast majority of merchant families (and not because they were ‘pro-British’; they were pro-British because the British understood, supported and generated business). Just over a century later, the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher adopted those Whig/Liberal principles and rejected those of Conservatism when it came to the workings of the market. The tragic irony is that Robert Peel fought under the banner of free trade for the repeal of the Corn Law so as to alleviate the plight of the starving Irish with imported grain. Seeing only the immediacy of the situation, he must not have realised that the same free trade policy could be used against the starving Irish by militating against a ban on the export of grain grown in Ireland during the famine – which was in fact the policy adopted by the Whig prime minister, Russell.]
@Graham C. Labour had to endure Catholic repression in the 60s, just because it had some secularist proposals in its electoral manifesto. Labour was one of the few organisations who publicly opposed the PN’s concordat with the Vatican in the early 1990s that made civil marriage quite useless when the couple also marries in Church. Alfred Sant is the only Maltese politician I know of who comes from a major party and who spoke publicly in favour of euthanasia. During Labour’s leadership contest last June, one of the things said, in private, against Michael Falzon was that he’s too ostentatious about his religious beliefs. Having said that, leftist parties are not automatically anti-religious or anything like that. The Swedish Social-Democrats have got a Christian branch within the party, a kind of think-tank/aid organisation.
Daphne, many Stricklandjani joined Labour in the 1940s and 1950s. I suppose they took with them the CP’s liberal culture, or didn’t they? Even Lord Strickland’s daughter, Cecilia de Trafford, had joined Labour and became a candidate in 1955, the election which saw Mintoff being elected as PM for the first time. And by the way, Mabel’s PCP was not exactlty the same as the CP. In fact at one point in time there were two Constitutional Parties, the CP and PCP. However I agree with you that it was the closest thing to a liberal party that we ever had. In fact in the 1940s they promoted the abolition of war-time restrictions on commerce and trade among other things.
Regarding left-wing parties and xenophobia, in the USA it was the Democratic Party that introduced segregation laws in Southern States (even if it was also the Party who helped most to repel them). It also seems that certain Democrat heavy weights had something to do with the formation of the original KKK. I guess it’s all about perception.
[Daphne – In the 1950s there was a Labour Party and a Worker’s Party. Unfortunately, Mintoff eroded and eventually entirely demolished the respectability of the Labour Movement, which until his destructive and antagonistic excesses was far more palatable to former supporters of the PCP than the Nationalist Party was. After the 1970s/1980s, that shifted: liberals who were left without a PCP to vote for shifted their support to the Nationalist Party, the Labour Party having come to stand for the antithesis of liberal values, and the Nationalist Party having come to represent many of them, particularly where free trade was concerned. Many of the Stricklandjani who shifted to Labour in the 1950s shifted away again in horror in the 1970s. ]
The PN is left wing and ‘progressive’ as long as its policies aren’t in conflict with the Catholic Church (hence, generous welfare state, widening university entrance and so on). But it should be clear to all that the PN is indeed ‘not liberal’ (in fact it is the least liberal party in Europe) on matters which would upset its comfy and beneficial relationship with the Curia. That’s what Tonio Borg means. He’s basically spelling it out honestly and bluntly. Kudos to him for doing it rather than playing the ‘Sssh, keep quiet’ game that Gonzi plays in order to maintain the status quo without upsetting too many people. It’s what some of us have been pointing out for a long time.
[Daphne – You know, I’m really fed of repeating this. Liberalism has nothing to do with libertarianism. They are two different words and they mean two different things. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people about who associate political liberalism with matters of sex and the regulation of sexual relationships. The origins of liberalism lie in a belief in the free market and its unhindered operation – at least British liberalism does, which is the form we are most familiar with and which we like to cite most often. Liberals were free-marketeers and had no interest in or desire to regulate sexual relationships. In this respect, the Nationalist Party manifests true liberalism and AD and the Labour Party do not. Sex has nothing to do with it, and divorce even less.]
What does Tonio Borg mean when he says “The PN is not a liberal party”? Surely he’s not saying that the PN does not believe “in the free market and its unhindered operation.” British liberalism might be the form YOU, Daphne, are most familiar with. It is quite clear that “liberal” in other contexts, such as the Maltese one, means something else. Most people know what it means in a Maltese context and divorce has a lot to do with it, you bet. That’s the point. Libertarianism is a different kettle of fish although there is occasional overlap, yes.
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but I can’t agree with you on this one, particularly given that a great many, if not the majority, of those calling for the regulation of sexual relationships (divorce, gay marriage) tend to have very non-liberal views when it comes to the free market, and often don’t understand the workings of the market at all. Most of the ‘liberals’ agitating for divorce on timesofmalta.com are the very same ones claiming that the Calleja/Bolton concert should be ‘free’. Somebody who wants divorce and also protection from market forces is not a liberal but an extreme socialist. Somebody who wants divorce but displays far-right racist tendencies is clearly not a liberal either. Divorce is not an issue anywhere else in the world, so you can’t say that being pro-divorce makes a party or a person ‘liberal’. The situation in Malta is completely anomalous and you might as well say that somebody who likes eating tomato cakes or sitting upside down is a liberal. You say that divorce is associated with forms of liberalism other than the British form – well, forgive me if I got this wrong, but I didn’t know that divorce remains contentious anywhere else in the democratic west, or that there are non-liberal parties campaigning to have divorce legislation repealed.
It’s 2009. Every country in the world has divorce but for two notorious exceptions. In considering whether a party or a person is liberal or not, divorce is neither here nor there and means little or nothing. The regulation of sexual relationships is only an issue when there is a campaign for more regulation or for less regulation. This will become obvious once divorce is introduced and becomes a permanent fact and not something to divide public opinion. The market, on the other hand, is always there and always changing. Unlike divorce, which can only be repealed or introduced, the market is at ever-present risk of being interfered with.
Also, and this is pure pedantry but I can’t resist raising the matter: I find it interesting that a call for MORE regulation of sexual relationships is being made under the liberal banner. Liberals want less regulation and not more. A call for divorce to allow remarriage is rooted essentially in conservative values, not liberal ones. But we can’t bang on about this forever, fascinating though it may be.]
Daphne, Boffa was quite left-wing, more than people think. His government, for instance, had “encouraged” wine importers to start pressing wine themselves, so as to strengthen Malta’s small wine industry. Ironically enough Labour had a kind of pepe policy, which I don’t agree with, in the 1940s – it seems they had tried to start using the English language wherever Maltese was used. But than came the split.
Mrs de Trafford was a candidate with Mintoff’s Labour. Boffa’s Labour had been dismantled by 1955 and most of its members joined Mintoff’s, hence Mintoff becoming PM and pushing for integration with Britain, which very strangely pro-British Mabel opposed.
Labour would hardly make it to Parliament if most former-Stricklandjani and their sons and daughters had to leave the Party. The maternal side of my family were staunch Stricklandjani and they found it easier to support Mintoff during his quarrel with the Church because they saw some parallelisms with Strickland’s own quarrel with the Church. They were quite critical of Mintoff, mainly of his methods, but they supported his social programmes and secularist ideals and his attempts at improving Malta’s economic situation. I still remember an older member of the family saying how a parish priest in the 1930s used to tell villagers during mass that it was a sin to do any business with the medium-sized activity, which was somehow related to animal husbandry, which the family had. I remember him telling me more than once that the nationalists mangia santi cacca diavoli, even when talking about the sad incidents of the 1980s.
Things are not as simple and clear-cut as some might make them to be.
[Daphne – My family were anti-Nationalist too for a long time for the reasons you describe, but that doesn’t mean they switched to support for Labour, having had the commonsense to realise that even the right-wing conservatism of the 1970s PN was by far the lesser evil to outright dangerous and destructive policies implemented by somebody who quickly revealed himself to be a sociopath. You don’t just look at the policies written on paper, but at who is implementing them – hence the trouble with Alfred Sant, and the credibility of Fenech Adami. “Labour would hardly make it to parliament if most former Stricklandjani and their sons and daughters had to leave the party.” I think you mean ‘government’, and yes, you are right: that is definitely one contributing factor to Labour’s failure to make it to government for the last 32 years (bar that Sant blip) and also the reason why it only scraped into power in 1971.]
@Daphne
“You really don’t know your country’s history, do you? Though it has to be said, neither does the president, with that Christian-since-St-Paul spiel that he gave his most recent interviewer”
I know my country’s history well enough thank you. Oh, but I forgot that you studied archaeology. You should know better. Look at the remains around you. No one would have built massive bastions and forts for nothing (hekk, bnejna erba’ hitan ghall-buzz tghid int?) if there wasn’t some impending danger.
@Graham C
I was referring to this bit:
“I wouldn’t expect the PN to go for gay rights or cohabitation, because they are a Christian Democratic party and it would be irrational for them to do so. I’m in favor of liberal ideas such as abortion and divorce, but I wouldn’t wait around for theocratic Gonzi to legalise them not even if the majority is in favor, because it’s the job of the PL as a quasi-socialist party to do this stuff (which is also why they are incompetent).”
Well, you have every right to believe in divorce and abortion. But then, one cannot let people do these things free for all. I mean, we could end up in a ridiculous situation like in the US, where a man divorces his wife because she burnt his toast or dumping live fetuses in rubbish bins like throwing away a half-eaten hamburger. There has to be a really valid reason to perform such things. I’m only in favour of divorce where there is domestic and/or psychological violence. And I’m only in favour of abortion in case of badly deformed babies (is it kindness to let them live?). Otherwise, it is a no-no for both things.
However, I do believe that morals are relative. My good is maybe your bad and vice versa. You define your own morals and live by them without imposing them on others. At the same time, society needs a set of rules by which to avoid anarchy and chaos. This is the balance I’m talking about.
[Daphne – I prefer not to comment on your last couple of points, because I’m afraid I’ll blow a gasket. As for your silly remark about the bastions: Maltese history didn’t begin with that 1565 battle which has to be seen in the wider context of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire (odd how everyone in Malta knows about ‘the Great Siege’ but almost no one knows about the Ottoman Empire as opposed to ‘it-Torok’. And it certainly did not begin with the arrival of a reluctant Order of St John, either. And that is quite apart from the fact that I think it ridiculous that we place so much emphasis on the 1565 battle when Malta endured a much worse and far more prolonged real siege in the early 1940s. I suppose you think it was more important to ward off Islam 450 years ago than to ward off Mussolini and Hitler within living memory. ]
I’m with you 100% on this Daphne, but I disagree with your analysis. Far from being the odd one out, Tonio Borg still represents the dominant faction within the PN. The only occasion in which the PN pays lip service to granting rights to cohabiting couples is on the eve of an election. Take for example the promise made to the Malta Gay Rights Movement to support an EU Directive against discrimination in the provision of goods and services. Less than three months after the election, both Busuttil and Casa (imagine that!) voted against it at the EP, and Dalli described it as ‘premature’ during a Council of Ministers meeting. Now that the EP elections are fast approaching, Busuttil is trying hard to eliminate the negative publicity he’s received over the past 5 years regarding his voting record on these issues – He said that he voted in favour of the gay rights clauses in the Annual EP Human Rights report last week, but had to vote against the whole report because of clauses on abortion. He had plenty of opportunities to vote in favour of gay rights at the EP when these were discussed in isolation, and he never did, nor did his hypocritical colleague Casa, whom I had the pleasure to notice plenty of times in gay bars in Brussels.
You’re right on one thing though – Tonio and people like him do repel new electoral support and what’s more is that with comments like his, traditional supporters are likely to run a mile as well. Hailing from a traditional PN family, I stopped considering myself Nationalist years ago, and only managed to make myself vote PN in 2003 because of the EU issue (and I physically felt sick while in the voting booth). How one can be gay and a PN supporter at the same time simply escapes me – it’s like being a Jewish member of a German neo-Nazi party.
As for your assertion that you need a registered partnership to benefit from tenancy and property rights, that’s not exact. Even now in Ireland (where they still don’t have a registered partnership law) and in Spain before marriage was opened up to same-sex couples, certain ‘fragmented’ rights applied to cohabiting couples on proof of cohabitation, most notably in areas like tenancy rights and immigration…
Nonetheless, you deserve a big thank you for discussing this issue, since it is only in this way that the PN can reform itself.
I have to agree with Graham C. on his second intervention, due to the fact that I strongly believe that one has to give to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar and to God what belongs to God … and keep both separate.
This has always been my strong belief that politics and religion cannot go hand in hand. They already interfere enough with one’s morale, thus when decisions have to be undertaken by two sets of overlapping rules, religious and civil this will tend to confine options within tighter parameters. With all the possible permutations and combinations of opinions and thoughts that individuals carry, one should limit the effects that particular barriers may create in their respective applications, whether political, religious, or any other demographic influences for the matter, in as low levels as possible.
Although acknowledging the fact of our culture being one where we do not go into extremism and that we are far from getting there, one has to also understand that the application of Islamic shariah is nothing more than the application of political beliefs and civil legislation as per core religious principles. By saying this I do not point my finger at countries where extreme shariah compliance is undertaken, as there are Muslim countries where this is less strict, including some in the Arabian Gulf, Syria, and also Northern African countries and Indonesia. Nonetheless, the effect is always one where certain human rights are withheld, and by this I refer to those applicable to girls and women as well as to workers.
Even our own religious history has shown in many stages that whenever strict religious regulations have been in place, someone, somewhere (sometimes even right among us) has suffered through some sort of oppression.
Whilst respecting the opinions of those who hold at heart the political beliefs of the Nationalist Party, I would very much look forward to a change where the PN departs from the present Christian Democratic Party towards becoming the true Liberal Party whereby it sheds present constraints of its decisions for more open resolutions applicable to a wider span of the nation. In other words it should carry its own “cross” rather than shielding beliefs of third parties irrelevant of personal commitments.
The side effect of all this would be that the Church would lose its finger-dipping in the steering of the nation, but then it has its own pulpits, sermons and active presence to invigorate its issues. A presence which I would dare say is limiting itself to “only being present” rather than developing strategies to upkeep the morale that it preaches. But then again, politics are for men as religion is for God.
@ C Chircop
On a different note but in agreement with the moderator, I would like to remind the readers of this interesting blog that, yes, there were situations where the Nationalist Party has had members who had fascism at heart, so much so as to try to revive the ideas of the Camice Nere Giovanile even in the post WWII era. But this is past and part of our history and should not be used for mudslinging in any way, especially since those persons in later years proved their worth on national levels until late in the 20th century.
An explanation of the left-right and authoritarian/libertarian spectrum:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
I think the political compass offers the best way to dealing with political ideologies. Because the problem with the current mainstream terms is that they mean different things in different countries, as someone else very well explained. In Europe we tend to use the word liberal when referring to free-markets and deregulated economies, while in the US and some other countries liberal implies left-wing/social Democratic.
I think we can all agree that the Nationalist party, like other Conservative parties, is economically on the liberal side (therefore right-wing), and socially on the conservative side.
Labour, like other socialist/social democratic parties, prefers more economic regulation (therefore left-wing), and less state interference when it comes to personal matters, although this is arguable considering their stance on immigration (“il-barrani ha johdilna xoghlna!”), and now cohabitation.
The Political Compass puts Malta (ie the PN) in the right-authoritarian section of the compass, along with practically every other country in Europe. Labour would probably be to its left and marginally less authoritarian (if only for its stance on divorce).
http://www.politicalcompass.org/euchart
[Daphne – Not quite. Labour’s extreme xenophobia and anti-European stance shift it firmly to the right. Despite the Damascene experience of its new leader, and the gravy-train hopping of some candidates, the party core remains fervently suspicious of the very idea of EU membership, still less the reality, and so do its voters. Labour’s stance on immigration shifts it to the right, too. On the other hand, the Nationalist Party’s educational reforms and the broadening of the welfare state shift it to the left. I’m glad you pointed out European liberalism is rooted in the free market and a deregulated economy, rather than a regulated sex life. Too many people labour under the misapprehension that the harder a person/party strives to regulate sexual relationships ever more minutely, the more ‘liberal’ that person/party is – a nice paradox. Extrapolating from the liberal economic model means less state regulation of sexual relationships and not more, and taken to the logical extreme, no state interference in sexual relationships at all. Regulation of sexual relationships, after all, is required only – where there are no religious issues or questions of respectability involved – to protect those who are economically weak, or to give them rights over property which is not theirs, which is the antithesis of the liberal economic principle. Two people living in a jointly owned house, each with their own respective income and pension, do not need the state to regulate their relationship or to protect to economically weaker partner because there isn’t one, and I know several couples in just that situation, homosexual and heterosexual. Too many people miss this essential point. They also miss another point: that it is possible to be married without having your marriage regulated by the community of acquest regime. All you need to do is, by mutual agreement, pop along to a notary and do away with it, or you can do so at the point of marriage.]
“Daphne – Not quite. Labour’s extreme xenophobia and anti-European stance shift it firmly to the right. ”
My reasoning and consequent labelling were according to the Political Compass. According to the site, left-right should only refer to economic policies, because one can be both a xenophobic socialist (as is Labour) or a xenophobic economic-liberal (as is Azzjoni Nazzjonali). It would be incorrect to simply say that they’re both right-wing, since their economic policies are diametrically opposed.
[Daphne – Bit odd to classify AN as liberal, don’t you think?]
[Daphne – Bit odd to classify AN as liberal, don’t you think?]
Economically they are indeed extremely liberal.
In politics there also Liberal Conservatives. The PCP was not a liberal party though supported by some liberals because they were pro British. Tonio Borg is a Christian Democrat who adhers to centre right politics on moral issues and centre left on economic issues. The two parties the PN and LP are coalitions The PN have right wing to centre left and the LP from Centre left to extreme left though it has some right wingers too.
In Australia the Labour Party was a promoter of the White Australia Policy, however it is still left-wing. A number of socialist Parties have this kind of conflict when it comes to accepting foreign workers and migrants, especially in the earlier years of immigration. Labour in the 70s welcomed Indian refugees from Uganda, hardly xenophobic. On the other hand PN propaganda in the 70s and 80s was characterised by racist verbal abuse on Chinese foreign workers and Arabs. I never heard a Labour politician passing any purely racist comment on immigrants. Being xenophobic is one thing, trying to control immigration is another, even if I think Labour could be more “liberal” when it comes to immigration.
Re the Great Siege, I know that probably I’ll be called unpatriotic, but one should also take into consideration the fact that Malta at the time was being used as a base for piracy/privateering. Pirates based in Malta attacked the Ottoman Empire, including Christian lands such as the Greek islands. They also looted vessels and enslaved Muslims and Jews, who were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Maltese were not the virgin martyrs we make them out to be.
[Daphne – You are historically correct about Malta being a safe harbour for pirates and a centre for slave-trading, and making most of its foreign earnings through that practice. Many of Malta’s most prominent families accumulated vast fortunes that way, from the remains of which their descendants continue to benefit. The Greek islands were not Christian but Ottoman, which was why the Order of St John came here instead of staying on there. They were populated by Christians, but Christians were not – at least technically – permitted to take other Christians as slaves. What went on in reality is another matter. Unfortunately, the history we are taught (rather than the history we make an effort of learning for ourselves) is not history but historical revisionism and 18th/19th century politico-religious propaganda devised to help build the idea of a nation state, and to shape our national identity into a lie. The completely unsavoury aspects of slave-trading, slave-keeping, cruelty, and piracy are airbrushed out of existence. Albert Farrugia posted a comment elsewhere on this blog about the obscenity of the play Stitching. The last time I remember recoiling with nausea, horror and disgust was when I was reading Wettinger’s exhaustively detailed book on slavery in Malta and turned the page to find graphic depictions of how slaves were punished by their Maltese owners. I went to the bathroom, threw up and had nightmares for days. Then I pinned those particular pages together so that I wouldn’t risk them falling open by accident when I was looking something up. But even with the pages pinned together, I still can’t bring myself to take the book down off the shelf, because I know it contains an absolute horror and I don’t even want that horror in my hand.]
@John Meilak
I sympathize with what you are saying regarding divorce and abortion, but only because it was my former belief.
People should be able to choose what they want to do with their relationships and their life.
As for abortion, if women want to abort then it’s their body and they can do what they like. I do not like the idea, but it is not up to me. I know happy single mothers, but I also know happy women who have had abortions outside Malta.
Some have been wanting a kid since they were 12, some want to have kids when they are married, more mature and old enough to provide a good life without the help of their parents. Everybody is different.
Last note: Do not confuse anarchy with liberal ideas. Anarchy means no rule, no government. This is like Marxism: it cannot exist.
The Nationalist Party has simply forgotten its roots when it speaks against Tonio Borg. The simple fact is that the journalist concerned wished to emphasise the point that the PN is not liberal and twisted the speech around. Agenda?
“They also miss another point: that it is possible to be married without having your marriage regulated by the community of acquest regime”
Correct me if I’m wrong: community of acquest covers the movable and immovable property acquired by a married couple after marriage. It is divided equally by the couple.
When a married couple fills up the income tax return and chooses a separate assesment, the section where the one who earns less income declares his or her income from interests has to be added to the section of the one who earns more income.
A co-habiting couple with the same income would pay less tax.
Where would readers classify a party in government which created this injustice and doesn’t want to rectify it?
[Daphne -Co-habiting couples do not necessarily pay less tax. But if you think you and your wife would pay less if you did not have community of acquests – as distinct from marriage, which in itself does not govern your fiscal status – then I gave you your solution but you ignored it. Dissolve the community of acquests. This puts you in exactly the same fiscal position as that of a cohabiting couple. If you buy all property jointly and you both earn roughly the same amount, and both have your own personal pension, then you really don’t need the community of acquests, which is a legal mechanism devised originally to protect married women at a time when they had no property or income of their own. I can’t believe this blog is now giving legal and fiscal advice, but anyway, it’s amusing.]
Somewhere I read of a particular raid on some Greek island and which was quite a success, but I don’t really know if they made slaves or just looted. By Christian lands I meant areas in the Ottoman Empire which had Christian majorities, such as Greece.
Some years ago I came across a short biography of Katerina Vitale, that lady associated with Selmun Castle and who is traditonally regarded as some kind of saint. It seems that she used to enjoy tortuting slaves, some details were given, a real bi*ch. It seems that she gave some money for the ransom of Christian slaves so as to escape from prosecution by the Inquisition on charges of mistreating her own slaves. I must say I’m not sure about the details, but it was something like that. But than, Vitale is featured on the painting at Selmun Church, pity they don’t do a festa in her honour.
[Daphne – Giovanni Bonello had written a very good piece about her, if I recall correctly. Basically, she was a sadist, probably a sexual sadist. There was one particular description -again, if I remember it right – of how she had a female slave tied to the balustrades on the staircase of her home and lashed until her flesh was in shreds. What foxes me about people like that is what they imagined their religion was all about.]
“she had a female slave tied to the balustrades on the staircase of her home”
I think you meant ‘Balusters’ not ‘balustrades’.
A balastrade is a series of balusters joined together with a hand rail.
[Daphne – I meant balustrade, without the s. The more accurate term would be banister, but the banisters of those Valletta houses are technically more akin to balustrades, though balustrades more usually go round the periphery of a terrace or parapet.]
@graham c
Democracy is the cousin of anarchy.
Hey Daphne, looks like some people were right. Peregin did indeed misreport what Borg said:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090129/letters/liberalism-and-christian-democracy
An excellent article – please read it:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090129/opinion/liberal-schliberal
Peregin has a habit of reporting incorrectly, vide the cash issue at Magic Kiosk and others. He is still young, and maybe he has to understand how important his role is.
Dear IM9,
There was nothing incorrect about any of my reports.
Tonio Borg felt the need to stress that his party was not liberal while speaking about the rent reform, a few days after making a passionate speech about how it doesn’t make sense to allow those people who “decide” to “go to Holland” and “marry someone of the same sex” to have the same rights as married couples when it comes to the same rent reform. I never attributed anything he did not say, I simply said one speech echoed the other. If you notice he does not say I misunderstood his position, he simply tried to say it in different words.
And regarding Magic Kiosk – again, nowhere was anything reported incorrectly. Joe Pace said he had around euro 70,000 in the building, and the next day he corrected himself and said it was more like 9,000. While the government insisted there was much less. I reported what was said, and made no observations of my own.
Daphne, although this article is about Tonio Borg, I’d like to correct you on one thing:
Australia makes no distinction between couples who are married or de facto married – i.e. cohabiting. So long as they are of opposite sex. So cohabiting couples have all the rights of married couples when it comes to property, tenancy etc.
[Daphne – I very much doubt it, and would appreciate it if you would cite chapter and verse of the relevant law. I am astonished that so many people who argue for tenancy rights for non-married couples fail to realise that the very act of getting married is a statement by that couple that they wish to transfer/obtain those rights. On the other hand, by not getting married, you are making a declaration as to the very opposite: that you don’t want those rights/don’t want to transfer those rights. The situation in Malta is anomalous, because you have people you can’t get married (heteros) but the solution to that is divorce. In Australia, where there is divorce, the anomalous situation doesn’t arise, so people who want rights can get married. If you impose rights and duties on people who don’t want them and who make a statement of this by not getting married, then that is a problem in itself. If two people live together when they are able to get married, what they are saying – or at least, what one of them is saying – is that they don’t wants the rights, duties and obligations of marriage. And so the state can’t impose those rights, duties and obligations on them regardless and against their will. I’m really surprised at how very many people don’t understand that marriage is not essentially a religious thing but a state-regulated contract precisely for the transfer of rights and obligations.]
Daphne, be careful about that risotto. It may cause you indigestion, you know, being an ‘Italianate’ dish, considering that you have no qualms in disparaging, at every opportunity that arises, that ‘Italianate’ great nation to our North.
[Daphne – I have no problems with the food.]
I am no lawyer but Wikipedia defines “common law marriage” and its implications in various Western states in lay terms. For Australia, it makes reference to the various laws in force in the 8 Australian states and territories.
Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage
In essence, de facto partners have the same rights as married partners. In some states but not all, they need to formalise this agreement in writing.
[Daphne – There is no such thing as common law marriage. To learn this, it is best to consult a specialist in family law in the jurisdiction in question, rather than Wikipedia. I remember last year a public information campaign carried out in Manchester by a firm of lawyers, driving home the fact to people that there is no such thing as common law marriage, and that you have NO rights over the person’s property, pension, benefits etc unless you are married to that person. “In some states but not all they need to formalise this agreement in writing” – that’s exactly what marriage is: a union formalised ‘in writing’, by contract.]