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The short-sighted inanity of Joseph Muscat’s sole pronouncement on the crisis in North Africa has been highlighted by the arrival in Lampedusa of 6,000 people fleeing from the upheaval in Tunisia.
That’s right: 6,000. Given that they could more easily get to Malta, where they will discover immediately the fatuous meaninglessness of the refrain ‘Malta hanina, hobza u sardina’, I imagine that by now Muscat has understood that the crisis will provide him with tourists, all right, but not the sort he expected.
When I wrote, at the start of the Egyptian revolution, that Gaddafi must be pretty worried, sandwiched as he is between two states in the process of ousting dictators (and which have since had them unceremoniously removed), two friends who travel often to Libya on business text-messaged me to say I didn’t know what I was talking about.
They said that Gaddafi keeps unrest at bay with handouts, a sort of panem et circenses approach to controlling the proletariat, but without the circuses.
And it’s without the understanding, too, that the fire in the neighbouring states was not started by the proletariat, but by those with enough education to understand the precise nature of their deprivation. The internet can have no effect if there is no understanding of how European democracy works (or doesn’t).
Now, as I write this, the news has broken that there are riots in Benghazi, Libya’s ‘second city’. They began after the arrest of a human rights campaigner, and no doubt were much encouraged by what had happened elsewhere. You can’t blame the people of Libya for thinking that if their next-door neighbours did what seemed to be impossible only two months ago – get rid of Ben Ali and Mubarak – then they might conceivably get rid of Muammar Gaddafi.
Perhaps – but it seems that there is more fear and less education in Libya than there is in Tunisia and Egypt, and that the net effect of the panem et circenses approach to government has been to create a sort of mass apathy in which many people are not interested in democracy because it means they’ll have to work. This is the understanding, at some fundamental level, that rights come with obligations.
The pro-Gaddafi protesters were out immediately in response to what was happening in Benghazi, chanting against Al Jazeera, which is supposed to have been a key player in raising awareness about the riots in other Arab states and so promoting support for them.
Meanwhile, the revolts and riots have spread to Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Algeria. These are not known for their tourism markets, so we have had no more stupidities from the leader of the Opposition. Perhaps he is restraining himself or he is being restrained by others.
It would be fascinating, however, to know what his notoriously anti-EU shadow foreign minister, George Vella, thinks about all this, if only he would tell us.
Perhaps he will say that it is in the national interest – Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox – for Malta to help shore up Gaddafi’s regime.
THE FENCE IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE PLACE TO SIT
Joseph Muscat is keeping his party on the fence on the matter of divorce. He thinks we won’t notice because he tells us that he is “personally” in favour of divorce.
Well, as Arnold Cassola correctly remarked on Bondiplus last Monday (although in Italian), who gives a flying wotsit about politicians’ “personal” opinion about divorce? This is politics, not a living-room conversation, and so concrete decisions and action are required. We don’t care whether an MP likes or doesn’t like divorce. We want to know whether he or she will vote for or against.
The worst of the waffling comes from the Labour benches, where MPs have been left without direction from the party. Because there is no Labour Party position on divorce, its MPs have been reduced to saying that they are “personally” for or against, lest their opinion be confused with the party line.
I cannot see how anyone can take Muscat and his party seriously on the matter of divorce. It has been obvious from day one that if he is truly committed to divorce legislation, as opposed to posturing to attract ‘liberals’ with slightly more than half a brain cell between them, he would commit his party to it. But he is reluctant to do this for two reasons. The first is that most of his MPs are violently opposed to it, although in the main they are saying nothing so as not to openly contradict him. This means he cannot include divorce legislation in his 2013 electoral programme. The second is that most of Labour’s core support, which lies in the ferociously rightwing, insular and conservative socio-economic group DE, is also opposed to divorce.
So Joseph Muscat, like Sant before him, has, through his attempts at having it both ways, ended up being painted into a tight little corner instead. He has tried to weasel out of it by saying that he can’t say what will happen beyond 2013 – perhaps he will hold another referendum; perhaps he will convince all his MPs to vote for divorce, blah blah blah.
It is all so weak, flaccid and unconvincing. Muscat is about to discover that if you wish to model yourself on Mintoff, you can’t do it with Joseph Muscat’s personality.
This article was published in The Malta Independent yesterday.
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I hear PL representatives most of whom were in the driving seat of that treacherous 70’s & 80’s administration saying that in Malta we do not have that same tension which has now reached a point beyond return in the Arab world.
We are certainly not in that situation now but whoever lived those treacherous days, drawing parallels is as dramatically simple as can be. It sends shivers down my spine.
Unbelievable. I heard the referendum question proposed by Joseph Muscat, and it is a whole paragraph.
I think we can apply to the Guinness Book of Records for the longest referendum question ever.
I’d like to see him explain that one to his gallopini.
It’s no record. Merely a copy of the Irish referendum question.
As far as I know, the Irish referendum was not a vote on whether to introduce divorce or not, but a vote on whether to repeal the constitutional clause that banned divorce, so paving the way for legislation.
The question is too specific. It could lead to a situation where you have someone agreeing with the introduction of divorce in principle but not the proposed model. If I were Joseph Muscat or Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando I would ask a very generic question – exactly as is being proposed by Dr Gonzi and if the people vote in favour I’d look into the details.
The simpler the better. I have a strong suspicion that if the question were “Are you against the introduction of divorce in Malta?” the Yes vote would win hands down.
Sneaky, isn’t it?
Daphne, why don’t you analyse (in the same manner) the PN’s position on divorce and the way in which it has been handled?
[Daphne – I have done so many, many times, my dear. I have even bored myself, let alone my readers.]
This time, while Ghaddafi is distracted by popular revolutions at home, Joseph Muscat is likely to tell us that a Labour government would lead a massive army of oil drilling companies into Libyan waters so that we can get hold of their oil reserves.
His government would, of course, use those oil reserves to pay for the “massive tourism advertising campaign” on Egypt and Tunisia.
“Anqas One ma kellu d-decenza jibghat gurnalist illum, meta ghandna maghna lill-Kummissarju Ewropew.” John Bundy, Affari Taghna, One, L-Istazzjon tas-Sena, Friday 18 February 2011.
Why should journalists bother to go to Affari Taghna to put questions to John Dalli if Dalli is so very much available to the media?
Bundy should understand that Malta does not revolve around his Super One programme. At least yesterday he got himself a headline on timesofmalta.com thanks to Dalli’s disclosure of some FDI in Malta.
I mean John Dalli announced, on One, that some foreign businessmen were going to invest one billion dollars in Malta which is governed by GonziPN. Isn’t that a significant piece of news?
Dalli probably disclosed the matter because he may be on an electoral campaign.
Iva smajtu jghid hekk lil John Bundy.
U jien wegibtu – forsi semghani – “Gurnalisti tal-One, dawk li kienu irewhu kontra John Dalli fil-kaz ta’ l-AMS, jew dawk li kienu jinsinwaw kemm John Dalli kien korrott fuq il-kaz tal KIA Motors, jew l-istess gurnalisti tal-One li min jaf kemm tefghu hatab fin-nar biex Gonzi ma jkollux triq ohra ghajr li jkeccieh? Jew dawk il-gurnalisti tal-One li min jaf kemm int – Bundy – ghajjart u ghajruk minn fuq ir-radjijiet?”
Ghal mument sthajjiltni qed nara in-NET TV bit-Two Johnnies jitdhaddtu fuq il-hajja politika ta’ min hallas ghax-xow.
Tkellimt ma’ habib tieghi dalghodu, Laburist akkanit. Fuq haga qbilna: li wara l-hafna kliem helu li dam ghal xi tlett kwarti, bdejna inhossuh diehel bil-moghod il-moghod. Sa dak il-hin jien marret ghajni bijja imma siehbi qalli li baqa’ imqajjem u sema l-paroli tas-soltu li hu vergni u Gonzi ix-xitan inkarnat.
L-ezercizzju tar-relazzjonijiet pubblici rega ma irnexxielux, ghax kif smajt fuq il-bejgh tal-Mid Med Bank ftakart kemm konna smajna fuq il-One r-rapporti ta’ insider trading fl-ishma tal-Mid Med minn xejn inqas minn Dun Gorg, hu Johnny ta’ Hal-Qormi.
Dak iz-zmien kienu ippublikati l-ismijiiet ta’ min kien xtara l-ishma ftit qabel il-bank inbiegh b’”sorpriza” ghal kullhadd. Fenech Adami kien ta’ l-opinjoni li kienet ‘deal’, imma hafna nies rawha mod iehor.
Haga wahda fi zgur: ma’ Gonzi ma kellux il-free hand li kellu ma’ Eddie. Gonzi ghalkemm avukat kien jahdem ghal snin twal mad-diretturi ta’ ditta kbira hawn Malta. Kemm hu ‘manager’ tajjeb qed jurina f’dawn iz-zminijiet difficli u uriena meta kien dahhal l-Ewro f’Malta.
John Dalli huwa bniedem stuz, kapaci hafna f’xogholu, u ambizzjuz. Dan kollu ma jfissirx li Dalli ma jizbaljax.
Ghal li jista jkun saqsieh xi hadd kif jahsibha fuq is-sitwazzjoni tbaqbaq fil-Libja?
“…most of Labour’s core support, which lies in the ferociously rightwing, insular and conservative socio-economic group DE, is also opposed to divorce.”
How do you know this? Ok, hunches, but what more? Why cannot you acknowledge that it was Labour, enjoying the support of the so-called DE group, which in 1973 (thirty-eight years ago) decriminalised gay relations?
Which in 1974 introduced civil marriage and removed the supremacy of church law (re-introduced by a Nationalist government, enjoying the support, of the presumably liberal, educated, open-to-the-world AB group)?
Why is it so difficult to give credit where it is due?
[Daphne – You are out of your mind if you think that when the Labour government decriminalised sodomy (not gay relations – men can and did sodomise women) and introduced civil marriage, it did so with the support of its constituents. It did so without its constitutents even knowing about, let alone supporting, those measures.
What do you imagine – that Labour was voted into power in 1971 and 1976 by an army of enlightened intellectuals, rather than a mass of ignorant illiterates? You have people today who don’t even know what divorce is, and you think that a subliterate or illiterate DE elector in 1975 would have known what civil marriage, or that s/he would have approved of sex between two men? Get real. Mintoff never consulted anyone or required consent for anything he did. Instead, he relied on ignorance and illiteracy to railroad people.]
Mintoff didn’t give an electoral pledge to decriminalise sodomy in 1971, and had he chosen to do so, this is what it would have sounded like:
“Taht gvern tal-Labour il-pufti jistghu jahxu l-xulxin u n-nisa jistghu jiehduh f’s**mhom.”
And if sodomy had not been decriminalised, then Norman Lowell would not be asking for Euro 200,000 for his painting number 15.
http://www.imperium-europa.org/gallery/index.php
(Disclaimer: Kev is banned from seeing painting number 17).
In my opinion the introduction of the civil marriage was a very important measure for the benefit of all, but still Mintoff did nothing about divorce.
No connection with above, but couldn’t help watching John Dalli in Bundy’s show. Dalli is refuting your claim that it was he who asked Gonzi for the European Commissioner’s post.
He insists that he never asked anybody for some posting. Bundy is quoting you (though careful not to mention your name), clearly trying to discredit you. Pathetic show, Sur Dalli.
[Daphne – It is definitely true that he asked for the job. I also know who he used as an emissary to make his request, so that he wouldn’t have to humiliate himself by making the request to the prime minister directly.]
As was to be expected, John Bundy couldn’t resist the temptation to make reference to the “artikolista” without a name who wrote:
“It wasn’t the prime minister who asked John Dalli to go to Brussels. It was John Dalli who asked the prime minister to give him the job of EU commissioner. Dalli counts on the prime minister doing the gentlemanly thing and not revealing this very salient fact, even as he sails up and down the country behaving as though he was kidnapped and bundled off. ”
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2010/12/02/comebacks-are-for-gordon-gekko/
John Dalli retorted that he never asked anything of anyone. He said he was always appointed by others to positions of trust.
The Sunday Times, 23 January 2011 – Interview with the Prime Minister:
“Question: It seems quite clear to me Mr Dalli is going to criticise you at will. Do you think he’s using it as a strategy to make a comeback and bid for PN leader in future?
Answer: I won’t go into hypothetical questions. I respect Mr Dalli for what he has done in this country. I remind everyone that it was Mr Dalli himself who expressed interest in the position of EU Commissioner. I took it upon myself to put forward his name to the EU President. I backed him throughout. Now if that wasn’t a vote of confidence in someone for one of the most prestigious jobs around, I don’t know what is.”
Whereas I found it strange that John Bundy did not quote this source, I do not remember John Dalli contradicting what the prime minister said.
For heavens sake, how old is John Dalli? I know that retirement age now is 65 and you are as old as you feel but there is a limit. I do not think that the PN should ever contemplate having a long-in-the-tooth geriatric leader with a chip on his shoulder.
What’s the matter with these people (John, Dun Gorg and Bastjan) who do not know when to let go and who continue moaning that they have been hard done by whilst planning their revenge. Shades of “The Empire Strikes Back”.
I don’t think anyone involved has handled the divorce issue very well. Pullicino Orlando’s attitude isn’t doing him any favours, and neither are his and Varist’s conspiracy theories.
On the other hand, the PM first got lost in legal babble to try and prevent a referendum, now he wants to avoid a question directly related to the bill concerned, knowing it’s the best chance at a ‘Yes’ vote winning.
The PM’s mission: keeping divorce at bay at all costs. Muscat, in spite of his U-turn on the referendum and not taking a party position, seems to have suffered least damage in this whole debacle.
The developments in Libya are interesting. Most probably the riots in Cyrenaica (Benghazi area) are fuelled also by ethnic considerations. Cyrenaica and Tripolitania are quite distinct.
Daphne, I was waiting for your article regarding the kind of tourists we’ll be getting after I saw on TV what is happening in Lampedusa.
I think Joseph’s comments were sent to the wrong tourist market.
I just hope that these countries will soon have democracies and that their people won’t feel the need to flee from their countries and leave their beloved ones behind.
May I ask? Is the divorce thing in order considering clause 1 of our Constitution?
Do you mean “The religion of Malta is the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion”?
How can a country have a religion? Individuals have a religion (or not). Malta isn’t a RC country; it’s a country where a majority of its population are RC, a difference apparently not widely understood.
It’s the difference between a theocratic state (like Iran) , and a democratic state. To say Malta can’t have divorce because of clause 1 is saying Malta is a theocracy.
To a certain extent it is a theocracy. Let’s not fool ourselves.
[Daphne – Oh come off it. Let’s not be ridiculous here.]
The state may recognise a religion or church as the official or state religion. In Malta this is naturally the religion of the vast majority of Maltese people.
Many other countries including European countries have similar provisions (as the United Kingdom, Greece and Norway) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion.
John Dalli was reported to have said, while being interviewed by Bundy on Super One, that PM Gonzi refused a USD1 billion proposal by a consortium for an energy project.
What he did not say was that had he been prime minister, he would certainly have accepted it, more so if the consortium agents would have spoken to his brother while he was locked up in jail.
Meanwhile, in Malta…
http://maltastar.com/pages/r1/ms10dart.asp?a=14263
That Joseph Muscat cutout!
Is that Alfred Sant waving good bye on the right? Good, at last, he’s gone.
And I suppose that is the moment Joseph Muscat called the Prime Minister “a liar” on Xarabank – a few weeks before it emerged that Joseph’s claim that his parliamentary group did now know about the MP salary increases was not true.
che sagoma …
who was that Drive in character who said that?
Do you think that they’ve included photographs of KMB on a massive truck with the dockyard workers in between smashing up the las courts and the Curia in September 1984?
What about the Rabat shootings? And the Tal-Barrani ones?
Do you think that there are ones of the SMU with their shields, batons and tear gas to … ahem … protect themselves from the underarmed children protesting at about the closure of their schools? Who knows?
Are there photographs of women protesting about against the constant Sliema water cuts, being attacked by Labour heavvies?
Maybe they’ve included a couple of shots of The Times building being attacked, too. Aah! Wishful thinking!
They may try to erase history from the minds of the ignorant few, but it will take a lot more to erase it from the memories of those who lived through it. It is everyone’s duty to keep history very much alive, lest it repeats itself, especially with the same old Labour faces still very visible at the forefront of the so-called “Moviment Gdid”.
It would have been amusing if Muscat had asked the Malta Tourism Authority to launch a campaign to attract tourists who would otherwise go to Libya (assuming such people exist). I presume that wouldn’t have gone down well with the Libyan ambassador and Mintoff’s eternal friend, Gaddafi.
If any further proof were needed that wherever you have marriage, you also need to have divorce, one need only read the article published in The Times a few days ago where a journalist interviewed random people in Valletta asking them to point out the differences between divorce, annulment and separation.
In the absence of divorce, everyone equated separation to divorce. Not one of the people interviewed (not even the priest) said that WHEN YOU ARE SEPARATED, YOU ARE STILL LEGALLY MARRIED.
On a social level – not legally – people think of separation as a kind of divorce, because although people don’t like facing the truth staring them right in the face, deep down they all know that the only way to force two people to remain bound together until they die is to fuse them surgically.
This situation is compounded even more by the fact that separated couples in Malta refer to their spouse as their ex-husband or ex-wife. Unless you obtain a divorce from another country, in Malta you can either have a spouse (separated or not), or you never had one at all (the mind boggling logic of annulment).
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110217/local/divorce-separation-and-annulment
As if it isn’t enough of a pity that our MPs are choosing to shirk responsibility and legislate for divorce, some of them even want to shirk the responsibility of thrashing out the details in Parliament. What is this nonsense about a long question being put on the referendum document? The Prime Minister is correct in wanting a simple and direct question.
Only simple questions can be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Or are we going to have extra space to write our own thoughts and discuss the question?
Or is the question going to be separated into ten shorter and simpler questions to see which parts of the bill we agree with and which ones we don’t?
And are we really going to expect the semi-literate, ignorant masses who don’t know the difference between marriage, annulment and separation to think about the finer points of the question?
Besides, in people’s minds, the question will always boil down to whether they agree with divorce legislation or not.
The argument that a short, simple question might lead to “Hollywood style divorce” (Pullicino Orlando’s words) is completely nonsensical. Isn’t that why Parliament has meetings, committees and sub-committees; to thrash out all the details of any laws which are to be enacted? Unless the people’s representatives propose and vote for “Hollywood style divorce”, then we wouldn’t have “Hollywood style divorce”.
Listening to Pullicino Orlando’s words, you would think that “Hollywood style divorce” is going to catch us unawares and impose itself on us. It’s about time our MPs start doing the job they are elected to do.
Just to reiterate all sensible people’s stand on the issue: we don’t like marriage breakdown one single bit, especially where children are involved, but we know that marriage breakdown is sometimes unavoidable. Divorce is a way of dissolving marriages which have already irretrievably broken down. It has nothing to do with starting new relationships and has no worse effects on children than separation or annulment.
May I also use this space to debunk the myth that families in the past used to be stronger and more loving and caring than families today.
The reason why almost all families used to stay together until death before was because a family used to be more of an economic unit than simply a union based on love. The truth is that love alone is a very flimsy thing to base a family unit upon. Love is a very fickle thing and hardly as concrete as euros.
One should also note that anyone who abandoned a family, for whatever reason, quickly became a social pariah, especially if it was a woman solely financially dependent on her husband. The economic and social price of a family breakdown was too costly, so people stayed married even if they were not happily married. After leaving a broken family, there was nowhere to go and not much to do.
The only reason why we can even consider opting for divorce in 2011 is because there is life after divorce due to the many opportunities open to all sorts of individuals. We should celebrate this fact. It is a sign of progress.
I believe that what has since prevailed in Tunisia and Egypt will not happen in Libya. The system is loaded in the favour of the government. For all the right (or wrong) reasons, Libya does take care of its citizens financially.
The influx of people of many nationalities into a huge country with a small native population has been a huge problem.
Benghazi has been a troublespot since the revolution and has never “accepted” rule from Sirte. It will end in tears for the protestors and their leaders. Rien à changer.
Having worked in all three countries, I can say with some experience of “red tape” that Tunisia was far more autocratic than Libya. Egypt was more “in your face” for backhanders than all except for Nigeria.
This isn’t you, is it?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110220/local/foreign-affairs-ministry-issues-travel-warning
Stephen Forster(5 hours, 5 minutes ago)Benghazi has always been a “potbed” of trouble, Egyptian sympathisers are known rabble rousers! Libya’s population is miniscule compared to the millions of people who have migrated and call themselves Libyans. If Libya departs from the current leadership expect THOUSANDS of clandestini pouring into Malta. Better buy some more tents for Hal Far and I will be the first one leaving for the USA (With my Maltese wife and kids)
U le, kien hemm naqa hajja fl-80s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl2YHJV3luU
Is it possible for John Dalli not to realise that he is being used by his past political opponents for their own ends?
He forgot how they used to tarnish his reputation by accusing him of corruption together with his brother.
But now the means justify the end. And so he aligns himself with everyone who wants to do harm to the government. I think that while the Nationalist Party should thank John for his past work, they should ask for his resignation from the party. It is time for John to part with the party he so loved and worked for in the past.
The worst thing is that he is playing the bully. When interviewed by Bundy, he said: ‘U ha naghmilha cara: jien ghadni nteressat fil-politika ta’ pajjizi.’
He is free to do what he likes but he has no power if it is not given to him by the electorate.
Wrong place to post this comment, but anyway; as far as the whole Karmenu Vella affair goes, I don’t know why you can’t just take a leaf out of your old chum Marie Benoit’s book. She finishes off her column today reminiscing about her interviews with Ganni Psaila on the following note:
“Our politics here get dirtier every day. I feel so disgusted that I am going to brave the storm and go and get myself a couple of bars of chocolate.”
[Daphne – Marie Benoit: old, yes, but chum, no. Rather the opposite, I would say.]
Lucky for chocolate-loving Ms Benoit that she’s living in Malta now and not 24 years ago.
I know, I know – I was just being facetious.
I was worried for a moment, reading her article today, that she would fail to tell us at some point what she had had to eat this week. Happily, she came through at the end.
Probably by chance, Benoit contradicts Balzan’s conspiracy theory that Ganni Psaila’s conversion was a mise-en-scene to frame Karmenu Vella’s driver. She thinks that Psaila was genuine which would make it likely that he was saying the truth about the Tarxien shooting.
Reno Calleja (Il-Colonna ) makes his voice heard on timesofmalta.com:
reno calleja(54 minutes ago)
The GWU and PL should not stand for this. Enough is enough. It is a cold calculated plot to sack workers who have given long years of service to Air Malta and keep those workers who were emplyed under the P.N.
I respect Gejtu Vella the Secretary General of the UHM a lot.
However I was disgusted when I heard him speaking on an RTK radio programm trying to justify this barbaric act by the P.N.
His argument that workers who were first in may not fit into the plan of the
re-structured Air Malta was full of flaws. He gave the impression that his only interest was to save the skin of his members and damn the GWU members.
It would be interesting to know, when the workers get the sack how many of these wouod be GWU members and UHM members.
In other countries , were the livelihood of workers was threatened, workers blocked the streets and showed they are comabtive. The GWU have to do the same. Being combative does not mean being violent. The workers must fight against these facist tactics.
reno calleja(46 minutes ago)
Some years ago a prominent Minister still serving in Gonzi’s cabinet vowed that he will not retire from politics until he will witness the destruction of all the state owned companes set up by Mintoff.
. HSBC, Sea Malta, TeleMalta, the Dockyard, Ene Malta and now Air Malta.
History will damn this man for ever. Malta’s young people and the next generation will view this barbarian as the most tragic fate ever to hit Maltese politics.
O w koncu znalazlam to czego szukalam od dawna, jestem wielce pozytywnie zaskoczona i z ciekawoscia bede z pewnoscia zagladac tutaj czesciej. Dolaczam pozdrowienia.