Scout’s honour: no oil spills

Am I the only one who detects a slight comic vein in the ongoing news reports about BP, Libya, drilling for oil and promises or guarantees about spills?

It all started when Joseph Muscat went on another of his jaunts to Tripoli with Alex Sceberras Trigona, this time to meet the big cheese rather than one of Libya’s lesser political cheeses.

He returned with the hot news that Muammar Gaddafi has promised him there will be no Gulf-of-Mexico type oil spills when BP begins to drill in Libyan waters.

Oh boy, was I impressed. BP makes a solemn promise to Libya; Gaddafi makes that solemn promise to Malta’s opposition leader and Muscat relays the promise to The People.

And what is this promise worth, exactly? It’s worth jack….well, never mind.

The comedy lies in the primitive behaviour and thinking of our local tribal leader, Muscat: “BP means oil spills. Naughty BP. We’ll make them promise not to do it when they start drilling around us. I’ll get hold of AST and we’ll see what Gaddafi can do.”

Spot the flaws in this reasoning: BP goes about the world’s oceans wilfully polluting them for fun, that it can afford to do so and will do so unless stopped, that Gaddafi has somehow managed to extract from BP the promise not to do it again, at least not around Libya, and that Muscat has come away having skilfully brokered an agreement to The People’s benefit.

The incoming Libyan ambassador saw fit to heighten the comic-sketch effect by going to the palace and telling the president that BP has given Libya the most stringent guarantees that what happened in the Gulf of Mexico will not happen here. This was the diplomatic equivalent of “I promise, sir, that it won’t happen again. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He did this despite the fact that it was the leader of the opposition, and not the leader of the government, who expressed concern, when the leader of the opposition is not delegated to speak for Malta, and the Libyan ambassador to Malta is not delegated to speak for BP.

The ambassador told the president that BP gave his country “very strong guarantees” that it will adopt “the highest and strictest industrial practices”. I’m sure BP will be fascinated to hear this, because if the company really did say that, then it is tantamount to admitting that it did not do any of that in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet the Libyan ambassador brought a bit of commonsense to the proceedings when he reminded his Maltese interlocutors that a major oil spill off Libya would be a disaster for……that’s right, Libya, and not just for Malta, implying what should have been obvious at the outset: that Libya has every reason to avoid a major spill and does not need Malta’s prompting or encouragement to do so.

The ambassador has yet to spend time here and to discover that the Maltese are God’s chosen people and occupy the centre of the universe.

“We are aware that the consequences will be very serious if, God forbid, any incident occurs,” the ambassador said, probably wondering whether we Maltese think Libya is populated by illiterate savages running around half naked, a description which more aptly applies to Malta in the summer, if the police are to be believed.

One of the newspapers chastised the government for not seeking guarantees from Libya on BP’s safety standards, and for saying instead that BP’s drilling in Libyan waters is between Libya and BP.

That’s a fact, but apparently there are some among us who expect Malta to make utterly pointless scenes on the sidelines or to seek equally worthless ‘guarantees’. One of them is the Labour leader.

MARLENE CHANGES HER MIND

So Marlene Pullicino has come round to the idea of divorce legislation. Interestingly, it’s not because her former position against divorce was completely at odds with the way she has chosen to live her life.

It is because, she told us, she has “spoken to many people, including priests and theologians, and they exonerate me of my guilt because I realised that legislating for divorce does not mean I am going against my Catholic beliefs. By legislating, I am not telling people to go down a certain path. All I am doing is giving them the right to make their own decisions.”

If I were the sort who uses exclamation marks, I would use several at this point. Marlene Pullicino’s entirely discretionary attitude towards where and how and for what reason she feels Catholic guilt is quite enthralling.

She is what the Catholic Church considers to be an unrepentant fornicator and double adulterer in a state of mortal sin, and yet off she goes, talking to priests and seeking reassurance – and, apparently, getting it – that she won’t be smitten by the Lord if she legislates for divorce.

One day, I might understand what all this is about.

This article was published in The Malta Independent on Sunday yesterday.