Libya's exploding and talk of divorce is ridiculous now

While his son addressed the nation, Gaddafi appeared on television wearing this outfit, making regal gestures at a crowd of men chanting hysterical slogans in his favour.

I’ve been glued to the international news channels and now I can’t sleep at the thought of what lies ahead.

Divorce?

Something tells me all that talk is going to seem pretty stupid as Maltese investors scramble to protect their interests in Libya and the European Union organises an evacuation programme out of Malta.

“We are only half an hour away from Europe,” Saif Gaddafi said on Libyan state television a few hours ago. That’s right: and guess which part of Europe that is.

If our prime minister and leader of the Opposition don’t get a grip on themselves and start thinking and talking about what’s happening in Libya right now (things have escalated massively over the last few hours), they are both going to sound as loony and cut off from reality as Saif Gaddafi has just done on television.

In their Sunday sermons, Muscat talked about Air Malta and Gonzi about divorce (and a passing reference to Libya, that’s true). But what price Air Malta when the level of Maltese investment in Libya far outstrips the value of the national airline?

And quite frankly, who gives a damn about divorce now with all that chaos? People here in Malta didn’t really give a damn about events in Tunisia, despite it being 200 miles away. But Libya – that’s another matter. Our commercial interests in that country are too great to sniff at. And it’s money that talks, isn’t it, even when young men are being shot with anti-aircraft missiles and crowds are attacked with rocket-propelled grenades.

A BBC journalist described Saif Gaddafi’s speech – the man was out of it, and probably not very bright to start with – as “one of the weirdest political speeches I have ever heard…Gaddafi and his son have lost final touch with reality.”

Libyans fear that Gaddafi will fight to the last man, that journalist said. His closest guards will fight to the last. Gaddafi really has no other choice, the journalist said, because he can’t flee. For which country is going to take him? Events in the last few hours have convinced people that these are the dying throes of the regime, he said.

Saif Gaddafi’s curiously detached speech was meant to calm the situation, but he looked like he had given up already. The BBC journalist said, over amateur footage of riots in Benghazi, that “it’s going to be very difficult to put that particular genie back in the bottle.”

He’s right, of course. It was the same with Egypt and Tunisia – there is a point at which protests cannot be called protests anymore because they are clearly a revolution in the true sense of the word, as opposed to a manufactured take-over like Gaddafi’s four decades ago. And then there is no going back, because the anger comes from deep down within society.

Some hours ago, Benghazi fell to the protestors as the military fled from the compound where they were holed up. Protestors broke in and took what they found, so now there are civilians parading with military-grade weapons.

Euronews reported information received from witnesses on the ground – that mercenaries had been flown in from Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo and were firing into crowds and shooting at people from helicopters. An army unit, it said, had defected and was fighting alongside protestors in Benghazi.

As I flicked from channel to channel, reports began to come in of fighting and burning buildings in four areas of Tripoli. One witness speaking over the telephone said that the noises we heard in the background were probably collapsing buildings, which had been set on fire. She couldn’t go out into the street to see for herself. It is too dangerous.

You can’t get into Libya without a visa, and the administrative system is in no position to issue them, even if it wanted to give a visa to journalists, which just never happens anymore. So journalists based in Cairo are trying to cover Libya as best they can. The Libyan government has shut down the internet and some telephone lines, so no new amateur videos of the fighting are coming through.

Frank Abrahams of Human Rights Watch told CNN that the news blackout and restricted means of communication create a black hole in which major human rights abuses can be committed. But Libya has long been that black hole of human rights abuse, and it paid us not to notice and to turn a blind eye because of business.

For years we kept up that pretence for the sake of false peace and real money, and now all those chickens are coming home to roost.

“I just don’t see how Saif Gaddafi’s speech can calm the crowds,” Frank Abrahams said. Too right. I think it would have made them more fearful, and at the same time, more hopeful that they were soon to get rid of that 40-year curse.

Why was Saif talking to the nation, in any case? It should have been his father doing that, but his father was instead being shown on television, live, wearing one of his fancy-dress outfits and standing in a large room in front of a small crowd of (male) supporters, all of them chanting manically in his favour while he made regal gestures.

So out of it.

His son blamed the opposition for orchestrating the chaos, but as CNN’s reporter in Cairo pointed out, there is no opposition in Libya. The opposition is in exile.

But Saif had that covered: people outside the country are doing this, he said. It was the age-old tactic of blaming external forces. But as the BBC reporter said, so much resentment has been created over 40 years, there is such serious high-level corruption of the sort that can only happen in an oil-rich state, there have been so many human rights abuses, so many ‘disappearances’, such restriction of basic freedoms and the press, that people have exploded.

They didn’t need outside provocation, though they certainly gained encouragement from the success stories of their neighbours in overthrowing their dictators.

Saif Gaddafi’s most ridiculous assertion was that only 14 people had died in Benghazi, when shooting on mourners at a funeral had killed 35 – and that was just one incident. Doctors there are saying that they have seen more than 200 dead and hundreds more are severely injured. People are queuing up to donate blood.

Saif Gaddafi’s warning to televiewers: outside forces want you to reach the situation that Egypt and Tunisia have reached, without internet and Facebook (and no mention of being without dictators).

The government anticipated this, he said, and there were some small events. A few people died but violence against the police has escalated.

William Hague, the British foreign secretary, went on television to say that the United Kingdom condemns what has been done to the protestors, “and we look to other countries to do the same”.

I don’t think Malta will be at the head of the queue. British investments in Libya outstrip Maltese investments by far, but we have been suck-ups for 40 years and never kept our distance no matter how badly human rights were abused or how corrupt Libya became. We thought we couldn’t do business without kissing ass, and now look at us. We can’t take a line on this one because you can’t condemn the actions of the man who had you over as a guest only last week.

Well, we can – but I can’t see it happening right now. If Tonio Borg didn’t condemn that nasty business of using rocket-propelled grenades to attack defenceless protestors, then he’s probably going to wait until Gaddafi is safely on a plane to the post WWII refuge of Nazi war criminals before he says anything.

I hope I’m wrong.

The chant on the streets of Benghazi and parts of Tripoli is “We want to topple the regime.” I think that message is clear. Reports of clashes in Green Square cannot be confirmed because nobody can get there to confirm them.

To end with the obligatory parochial note: I rather think John Dalli has far more pressing problems now than what best to say on his next Super One appearance.