At a time when ideological differences continue to become an ever-narrowing gap, with the Left going Right, the Right going Left and the Centre becoming common, convenient territory for all, there is still one particular distinguishing mark that has made an opportune appearance. Here in Malta, it is in how the parties view minority rights.
The divorce referendum is recent enough to cite as a glaring example of how the two major parties have shown, and seem set to continue showing, that they are miles apart when it comes to such rights. That Labour’s yes to divorce was so forcefully backed by a huge majority was already an indication that a shift in Maltese society was taking place without the then GonziPN government even noticing. It was, incredibly, an exact repeat of Labour’s previous failure to read the writing on the wall after the 2003 EU referendum, which result was followed by an electoral defeat soon after.
The divergence between the parties on the issue of minority rights, however, persists, much to the irritation of what I believe is a majority of people on these islands who sincerely hope not only that the whole issue is buried once and for all, but for this nation to finally be on a par with the rest of Europe and most of the Western world.
The hiccups continued last week during Minister Helena Dalli’s appointment with the public in the highly successful “Gvern li Jisma’” series when the meeting was discussing comments and questions on the civil union law being debated at committee stage in Parliament. It was obvious, however, that the Minister was speaking from a position of strength. Her sterling work in the field of minority rights over the past few months has been rightly recognised by many. After all, it is a reflection of the still-fresh Labour administration’s electoral pledge, supported by one of the strongest electoral majorities ever to be achieved in the history of Maltese politics.
It certainly looks like this highly visible distinguishing mark is going to continue featuring prominently as the Maltese people warm to the brave idea that minority rights actually mean rights for people from all walks of life, for loved ones and family members, for kindness, as one social worker declared in his intervention during Dr Dalli’s meeting, and for a free and genuinely considerate society.
Minority rights are not restricted to the LGBT scene. They also refer to people, hard-working men and women, living in cohabitation where, as in the case of straightforward marriages, stories of love, rejection, and other problems abound so society still has the duty to offer cover and protection wherever and whenever needed. Women especially have to face situations where they find themselves abandoned and denied what other women, because they choose to marry in the formal, traditional way, get from the state. Not anymore, however.
It is why it is also annoying to hear the very president of the National Council of Women actually coming out against a civil union law when it will no doubt offer help and protection to women on the LGBT front. Thankfully, her counterpart from the Malta Gay Rights Movement, Gabi Calleja, quickly put her in her place.
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Books are books
It was of course to be expected that Eddie Fenech Adami’s autobiography in English (why not in Maltese, given his political speeches were always in the vernacular?) would cause some ripples. Love him or hate him, the man has been at the forefront of Maltese politics for many years and his views and recollections are, no doubt, always a source of interest to people of all ages.
But books are books, and autobiographies especially, are to be taken for what they are – the work of an individual who wants to paint his own picture of things as they were or still are. It is useless pointing fingers at authors who choose to do so. You can buy the book and take what’s in it as gospel truth or you can buy it and dismiss all or some of that it represents. You can also refuse to buy it. It’s a free market.
The huge success that this very newspaper had when it chose to give its readers Dom Mintoff’s “Independent” writings in book form does not mean one had to agree with was presented therein. It just shows that an author’s name, popular or notorious, is always a guarantee for a good debate. The same goes for Eddie Fenech Adami’s recent publication.
More on the subject of books, of particular interest to people my age or older is John Cornwell’s “The Dark Box” published last month by Profile. It is a unique study of the Catholic Church’s “sacrament” of confession and its possible connection with the sexual abuse of children.
Cornwell insists that by lowering the age at which children made their first obligatory confession – seven – Pope Pius X had, in 1910, “prompted sex complexes and created opportunities for paedophile priests” and “exposed children to priests in unsupervised situations of extraordinary privacy and intimacy”. So much so, that “a significant minority of those confessors proved to be sexual abusers”.
The assumption of course was that priests were to be trusted. But, according to Cornwell, cut off from women and the outside world, ignorant of child psychology, convinced of unearned privileges and entitlements, many clerics were trapped in emotional immaturity.
Most of us remember those late Saturday afternoons spent queuing up to confess, but with hindsight, what possible sins could a Catholic child commit to deserve Hell for all eternity? Being late for Sunday Mass? Buying the Church-banned newspaper for daddy? Breaking the Holy Communion fast? We all also remember how one was forbidden even from eating a crumb or drinking a minuscule drop of water from midnight the night before and how many children agonised over whether they had swallowed a trace of toothpaste or swallowed a bitten finger nail!
Anthony Burgess, the famous author who lived in Malta for a few intellectually turbulent years, once recalled how he had, one day, accidentally swallowed a drop of rain water, thought he had broken the fast and thereafter always believed he was damned.
Books are books. Enjoy them. You don’t have to believe all or parts of them. Even the so-called Holy Books, of whichever religion and often discovered in an Indiana Jones environment, are subject to interpretation and speculation.
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You can say that again, Ms Lagarde
Oh, I see that Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, thinks the so-called Troika – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and her own IMF – got it wrong on Greece. The IMF chief has in fact publicly admitted that wrong solutions were applied to the Greek economic crisis.
You can say that again, Ms Lagarde. I don’t know what Greek expletives must have followed her television interview with Australia’s ABC, but they are certainly deserved.
Europe has finally come to realise its severe austerity measures have boomeranged in a way that while the one per cent of well-to-dos continue to enjoy their custard, the rest, made up of working-class people all over the EU and Greece in particular, have had to lump it.
It is no wonder the Socialists and Democrats’ alternative to austerity – economic growth with a social conscience – is fast gaining ground as we approach the last lap to the European parliamentary elections.