Luciano Busuttil, who was in control of the House last Friday night - or rather, was not - when it met for a committee session, could barely conceal his delight as 76-yearold Labour backbencher Joe Debono Grech hurled threats and insults at newly independ
But was it funny? No, it was not. Busuttil was amused because he is not the sharpest knife in Joseph's drawer and so does not understand the implications of that slanging match. But worse than that, he smirked as Debono Grech yelled at Farrugia that if she did not stop, he would assault her and "smash her open". You have to be very dull-witted indeed to find it entertaining when one Member of Parliament says that to another in the House. And you have to be a complete savage from the gutter not to understand how bad it is when a man says that to a woman.
Busuttil's views on women are far from liberal and progressive, as we have seen this week. He likes the ladies, but their brains and independent spirit appear not to be of great interest. At the close of the session, he pretended not to have heard what Joe Debono Grech said, and he especially did not hear his threat of assault. This was when he was supposed to be in control of the House in lieu of the Speaker. "Maybe it's because my voice is loud and (when I was speaking into the microphone) I couldn't hear them," he said. How very unconvincing - if an Opposition MP had yelled at the top of his voice that, say, Helena Dalli should shut up or he would race across the floor and turn her into pulp, you can be sure that Luciano Busuttil would have put on his very cross facial expression and flown into an indignant rage, then posted about it on Facebook.
What shocks me most is not that Joe Debono Grech said what he did - I was an adult in the 1980s, after all, and remember his disgusting scenes in parliament and outside it only too well - but that he said it to a woman. Yet this is the factor which seems to have registered least with those who commented. And that, too, is shocking. It indicates just how deeply embedded misogyny is in Malta, and how it is considered not at all out of the ordinary for a man to threaten a woman with serious physical assault for refusing to be good and shut up. The general theme of the criticism to which Debono Grech has been subjected, including by the Opposition whip who was the first to speak in parliament minutes after the shouting ended, is that it was disgraceful for one member of parliament to threaten another in that way. Yes, but it was vile for a man to threaten a woman in that way, which is worse.
Another factor which has been completely ignored is that Debono Grech threatened to beat Marlene Farrugia to a pulp with her companion, Godfrey Farrugia, standing right there listening. Stop for a moment and think about the implications of a man yelling at a woman and threatening to smash her face in, in a room full of people who include her husband, boyfriend or companion, who is watching and listening. If Godfrey Farrugia were as vulgar, savage and ill-bred as Debono Grech, he would have grabbed the man by the throat and knocked his teeth in, throwing in a few kicks to the spleen and head for good measure. And if he were a gentleman in another age, he would have had to challenge him to a duel. Either way, and even in the 21st century, for reasons that should be obvious, when a man insults and threatens a woman in front of the main man in her life, he is also insulting, dismissing and disregarding that man. Godfrey Farrugia will have registered this: not only did Debono Grech show no respect for him at all as the party whip when he asked him to stop shouting, but he showed no respect for him at all as Marlene Farrugia's companion.
All in all, last Friday's sitting in parliament was a demonstration of liberal and progressive politics in action. A woman being told to shut up and be quiet if she knows what's good for her; a woman being told that if she doesn't stop 'nagging', she's going to get her face smashed in by a man; a member of parliament who's just been exposed as having rather too keen an interest in all those bits of ladies which are not contained in their skull finding it very funny when a woman is insulted and taunted for speaking her mind; and the entire line-up on the government benches either sitting frozen in silence or joining in with the shouting and taunting as the men ganged up on the woman. Even the Minister for Equality and Civil Liberties, a woman herself, seemed not to feel the pressing need to stand up and tell her colleagues to get a grip on themselves. It was a sad spectacle, and a worrying one.