Shotgun diplomacy
A couple of weeks ago, Joseph Muscat stood up in parliament and demanded an urgent debate on immigration. Malta has a crisis on its hands, he said, and it couldn’t wait.
Would that the prime minister had taken him at his word, and put all other parliamentary business on hold. It would have been such fun to watch Muscat go, casting about for inspiration and talking off the top of his head and out of the seat of his pants. He’s had all this time to prepare – though granted that he hasn’t many resources on which to draw – and the best he could come up with is an ‘action plan’ (his words, not mine) that reads like a hysterical exercise in shotgun diplomacy.
You know what, Muscat? I had enough of shotgun diplomacy when I was growing up. It made Malta the pariah state of Europe. It made the Maltese feel like a joke on the rare occasions we could leave the borders of our island and get out and about. Muscat made it clear when he was chosen to be party leader that he would embrace that element of his party which has lingering Mintoffian beliefs and sentiments. But really, there are limits.
Ignoring our obligations under international law or using our vote to sabotage projects of common interest in European forums if we don’t get what we want on immigration are not options, even if Muscat is so politically illiterate that he thinks they are. What a shame the prime minister didn’t slam down hard on his opposite number when he said this, but that’s not his style. He tends to prefer the succinct remark, but the literal population out here just doesn’t get those.
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again. What gets me most about the leader of the opposition is his apparent lack of intelligence. He can think a matter through only so far and no further. So let’s say Malta is prepared to suspend its international obligations, and to sabotage projects in European forums, which Muscat thinks is just dandy. It’s obvious that he is looking at this course of action in an absolute vacuum. He hasn’t thought far enough about it to understand that international obligations are a two-way street. If you suspend yours and dump on others, others will suspend theirs and dump on you. Even if they don’t go quite so far, there is bound to be some form of retaliation.
Some days ago, an Italian frigate picked up migrants whose boat was sinking. The captain wanted to put them ashore at Malta. Malta refused, saying that the nearest landfall was Lampedusa. Let’s say the Italian government had adopted Joseph Muscat’s outlook on things, and radioed orders to its frigate to ignore Malta’s instructions and head here anyway, throwing the migrants overboard within swimming distance of Pretty Bay. What then? If we do that to Italy or Libya, Italy and Libya can send out their full military might. But if Italy does that to Malta, what can we do to stop it? We can send out an AFM patrol boat with a couple of soldiers on board who have never seen active service, to take on a fully equipped naval frigate. We needn’t ask what our reaction would be if Libya had to do that, because we’re there already, and we’re doing it.
International obligations favour tiny, weak players like Malta. And tiny, weak players like Malta are those with the most to lose when politicians begin suspending international obligations. It is those who are not particularly bright who are unable to see the bigger picture but only part of the detail. Joseph Muscat’s ability to grasp the bigger picture was summed up by his prolonged and relentless hostility to EU membership, a hostility that lasted until he became a member of the European Parliament and was able, like St Thomas, to touch and believe. In his own words, it took him five years of hindsight to realise that the Yes vote won the referendum, though he couldn’t bring himself to wrench out through gritted teeth the words: “I was wrong.”
He likes the idea of a referendum now. He has said that if the prime minister doesn’t wish to adopt his plan for shotgun diplomacy, then the prime minister should put the matter to ‘the people’ – the latest buzz-phrases for Joseph Muscat, his Labour Party, their elves, Astrid Vella, her FAA and various populist demagogues of the newspaper letters pages and on-line comments-boards being ‘the people have spoken’ and ‘let the people decide’. It makes you wonder what they imagine parliamentary democracy is, or why MPs meet in something called the House of Representatives. Forty years after the rest of Europe, Malta has discovered the notion of People Power. Too bad that platform shoes and flares are out of style again, though you can still get away with love-beads.
So Muscat wants his ‘action plan’ to be put to the vote in a referendum. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? It’s frightening to think that a jackass like this could be running the country in four years’ time. Well, if he wants immediate action on immigration, he’s not going to get it with a protracted referendum, and certainly not when he needs at least five years of hindsight to come to terms with the result.
The government, Muscat said, should set down the number of migrants it can afford to host and not deviate from that figure. What did I tell you about thinking so far and no further? He didn’t think himself to the point of what happens when the giant sign above Malta lights up fluorescently like those tabs on the doors of airplane lavatories, except in our case it won’t say ‘occupied’ but ‘full up’. He must imagine that once he’s got those big signs up all round the coast, the occupants of leaky boats will turn right back and carry on towards Lampedusa. “It says there that they’re full up.” “Oh, OK then. Let’s go somewhere else.”
And as the Minister of Home Affairs remarked scathingly, Muscat left out the most important bit: what happens when we have ‘no vacancies’ and there are people out there drowning. Do we let them drown, on the basis that we have reached our quota? Muscat failed to answer, but his elves and acolytes did so on his behalf, on the comments-board of timesofmalta.com, where the racists and far-right-wingers are now congregating because their previous internet forum, vivamalta.org, has been shut down. “Give them food and water and send them on their way.” “Transfer them to a safer boat and head them off.” “Tow them out of our waters.” The real comments are ungrammatical, hysterical and ill-spelled, and they usually address government ministers and other senior personages by their first name, like Carm for the Home Affairs Minister, the only exception being the prime minister, who is GonziPN. The thing that strikes me about these comments is not so much their base inhumanity, but the fact that the people making them have spent their entire lives on a tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean, and have absolutely no idea at all of the savagery and danger of the sea that surrounds them. They persist in thinking of it as a large and benign pool that stretches a short and uneventful distance to the North African shore, completely oblivious to its immeasurable perils.
Muscat cannot make a public appearance without referencing Barack Obama, and he brought him up again now. Barack Obama is deploying a heavy military presence on the Mexican border to control immigration. Again, Muscat thinks thus far and no further. Let me spell out the not-so-fine distinction, Mr Leader of the Opposition. Where there is a land-based border, a country can and will repel illegal immigrants, because it is a simple and entirely legal matter of keeping them on the other side of the ‘fence’. But when you don’t have a land-based border, and those illegal immigrants are coming in off the sea and are in your maritime area already, you can’t repel them. Not only are they within your sphere of responsibility, having entered your maritime area, but there are serious consequences to repelling a person on the sea that do not apply when repelling a person on land, drowning being foremost among them.
There’s more, but it will have to wait until Sunday.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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There’s another gap in Muscat’s thinking – and he’s not the only one who made it. How is the quota going to be calculated? Budget limits? Land space? Housing? Food supplies? Whimsical political will?
He’s either mistaken this hare-brained idea for the notion of a legal immigration quota – which is an entirely different consideration based on economic needs and prospects – or he has wilfully or unknowingly not thought through the implications of setting limits on population size.
Am I correct in recollecting that Dr Joseph Muscat visited Libya shortly after becoming Leader of the Opposition and discussed migration and related issue with the authorities there? When he returned home he indicated that Labour had made a major breakthrough as regards to migration from Libya. Nobody seems to have reported any reference to his visit to Libya and any concrete result of that visit during the recent debate in parliament.
All I have to say is: Kemm hu tuba, madonna!
I suggest that you all read Ranier Fsadni’s article in The Times today, called Return to Sender.
Hey P
you are so right, how could we have forgotten? Well, come to think of it, easy to, when the one spouting out those empty words was none other than Twerpy – oh God, possibly our future prime minister.
I wonder why Astrid Vella is so silent about the scandalous development planned for Wied il-Ghasel in the limits of Mosta. Application No: 05560/05 for 26 horrible flats & 24 garages just in front of Casa Arkati and a few metres away from the valley bed was brought forward for reconsideration and approved on 20 January after being refused the first time back in 2007.
The applicant is Joe Micallef, Jason Micallef’s uncle. People power!
For the whole story see this interesting website:
http://tarka.synthasite.com/
Joseph Muscat’s proposals and speech are a summary of all the childishness displayed in the hundreds of articles, letters and online comments in the past few months.
Incidentally, all good things come to an end and, sadly, vivamalta.org is no longer down. Apparently they had some financial issues with the hosting company but have now paid and the Klan is back.
[Daphne – That should clear a bit of space elsewhere.]
Hi,
This is a bit out of point really but shouldn’t “the people” be “the public”? I know it’s “il poplu” in Maltese but using the literal translation in English doesn’t sound right somehow when its in that context. I suppose most politicians and whoever else, would be speaking in Maltese and therefore saying “poplu” but it’s translated into “people” in the English language press in Malta. I’d say your articles are the only ones where that doesn’t happen actually unless you’re quoting. Otherwise you tend to use “public”. Any thoughts? Thanks.
[Daphne – Yes, in normal situations it would ‘the public’. But Labour feeds buzz-words into the system, and the latest of those is The People. I can understand why the trolls and elves on the internet would pick that up, but Astrid Vella? Peter Apap Bologna? The ‘I’m so superior’ denizens of Sliema? Pathetic.]
Why do you think the move from “cittadini” to “poplu”? I thought the former has a more socialist ring to it and poplu is to the right. Could it be a perceived move away from Sant?
[Daphne – No, because The People is the new buzz-word. It is designed to have the same effect as ‘ic-cittadin’, but The People is deemed to have a hipper ring to it, and to appeal to the partially educated who congregate on the timesofmalta.com comments-board and, among the more educated classes and those from ‘tal-pepe’ backgrounds, it appeals to the very middle-aged who think they have a touch of Danny Cohn-Bendit about them. I think it’s hilarious, but in a frightening way. It shows how easy it is to bend and twist people, even people who think that in being bent and twisted, they are actually standing up and rebelling. There is so little capacity for independent thought and analysis. I blame the form of instruction in our schools, which has for generations been designed to quash all powers of inquiry.]
True. This L. Galea fellow comes across as someone who’s spent an entire lifetime teaching primary school children.
Leonard: L. Galea comes across as someone who’s spent an entire lifetime being taught by primary-school children.
“There is so little capacity for independent thought and analysis. I blame the form of instruction in our schools, which has for generations been designed to quash all powers of inquiry.”
100% true- right now I am listening to my 12-year-old studying environmental studies – she is trying to literally squeeze into her brain the various building styles of Valletta, the different architects and grandmasters who built the various palaces and churches as well as a whole list of dates.
Corinne: That’s really unfair on primary school children. But I know what you mean.
Well, Daphne, I suppose nobody in their right mind would call Sliema English proper English although it certainly is a cut above that spoken by most Maltese. A Sliema friend of mine put it very aptly one time when he said to me that he doesn’t speak English – he speaks Sliema (or should that have been Sliemaish?). I’m sure you’ve heard of “by force” used in English where you would put a “bil-fors” in Maltese. I know you’re from Sliema yourself, but judging by your writing, you seem to be an exception to the rule as far as Sliema English goes. That’s probably why you use “public” and not “people” and when you do use “people” you use it in the right context. I live in Ireland and its interesting how, although the use of English is far more prolific here than in Malta, the same errors symptomatic of us Maltese can be found here when the Irish use expressions and sentence construction in English which are a literal translation from the Irish language. As far as the elves are concerned – least said, soonest mended as my granddad used to say. They are very far removed from the English-speaking world, bless them – a vital factor that goes a long way in explaining why they say what they do say. It’s an impediment that seriously undermines accessibility to the many ideas brewing outside the few square miles of territory we call our own, and the ability to process them. In the long run, this kills off the ability to undertake even the most basic degree of self-criticism and anybody in that frame of mind rarely comes up with anything that merits the time of day.
Hi Daphne,
I am keenly awaiting your sequel to your excellent Thursday column. Glutton for punishment that I am, I have been listening to RTK’s “Stampa Cara”. This is just a comment regarding how RTK might be, intentionally or otherwise, aiding and abetting Labour’s agenda. Dr Carmen Sammut, possibly in cahoots with Labour, has permitted Desmond Zammit Marmara’ to reiterate incessantly Joseph Muscat’s infamous 20 points on illegal migration, to the chagrin of Laurence Grech.
[Daphne – From what I know of Dr Sammut, that wouldn’t be her style at all. Maybe Zammit Marmara is just bossier and more domineering in radio debates than the polite and reticent Grech.]
While working in my garage Saturday mornings I listen to RTK with this Labour man Desmond Zammit Marmara` on every other week, harping and trying to be subtle. He goes on air very well prepared with statistics and all, then you hear the phone-ins from radio elves, about how much ‘il-poplu’ is suffering. I enjoyed the programme more when Carmen Sammut, Joanna Drake, Michael Seychell and George Abela were invited by Mario Tabone Vassallo. Next week, Michael Briguglio and Michael Schiavone will debate on Carmen Sammut’s show. Dr Sammut is a wee bit biased towards Labour, but I like her style – she is moderate, assertive and calm. Zammit Marmara is now Muscat’s chief propagandist on RTK.
It’s really too bad that you’ve spelt out the US-Mexico fallacy for him, because you may have inadvertently provided the ideal solution for his ‘what-to-do-after-the-quota’ conundrum.
Using all that useless money the EU gives us to tackle immigration to erect a huge (electrified?) fence around the perimeter of our territorial waters might easily fit in as Point 21 of the Grand Plan. And it’s no more impractical than most of the other ideas floated around – I’m sure somebody on that awful message board will come up with the idea, eventually.