In politics, there is thought and there is action. The latter is more important than the former when it comes to achieving results, but the meaning of the action depends on the thought.

Our little country is relatively young. Its institutions have still not grown out of their infancy or, at best, their adolescence. They have still not achieved full emancipation from the colonial past. State-building is still a work-in-progress.

At the same time, Maltese society, which is much older than the country's modern status, has its needs - and they are pressing needs. Not just in respect of the vulnerable who need decent social accommodation, but everybody else - from people who need less air pollution because they are increasingly suffering from lung disease, to students afflicted with respiratory problems on account of mouldy classrooms, to the overall sensation gripping the country that there is no chance of saving the environment for future generations.

Action is required on both fronts: state-building is an important priority but social needs are equally important.

State-building

The Prime Minister's insistence on wanting to protect the Mizzi-Schembri duo at all costs is a humongous spoke in the wheel of the state-building process. How can the Maltese state function properly when its executive branch's topmost representative fails to take the action expected of him?

When state officials see that clear misbehaviour is condoned, they will either feel demoralised or, worse, empowered to do likewise. When the population sees all of this, its respect for the authority of the State will plummet.

Benedetto Croce

In the inter-war period, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce wrote that people treat politicians like doctors. When somebody needs a doctor to cure them, they don't care whether the doctor is honest or dishonest, moral or immoral. All they care about is that the doctor can cure them. The same applies to politicians. People hardly care whether a politician is honest or not; what they do care about is that the politician can deliver and create wealth, stability and well-being.

Croce was writing at the time when Italy started experimenting with the Fascist regime. Whether you like Mussolini or not, the historical truth is that for a number of years, the regime enjoyed a high level of popular support. The Italians call that period 'gli anni del consenso' (the years of popular approval). The regime created many structures and entities that are either still in place today or else served as the basis for further development down the years. These had social objectives and proved popular with the Italians. Most importantly, the regime tried to impose order on a population and country that had grown disorderly.

So Mussolini's morality was hardly important. What was important was that he was making something great out of Italy (or at least, so the propaganda said).

The question thus begs itself: 'Are Croce's words still valid today?'

The morality of politicians

I would say that they are only partially valid. Yes, social needs are important. But so too are matters of state-building. Creating wealth is good. Distributing it fairly is better. Having institutions that work is good. Not abusing government power is better.

The country needs a healthy version of this two-pronged vision: state-building on the one hand, social conscience on the other. Despite all the talk about 'the rule of law' and 'our institutions are working fine' and so on, it seems to me that Joseph Muscat's administration is failing miserably on both counts. It seems to me that the more the Government protests that there is the rule of law and all that, the less things are functioning as they should. The Government doth protest too much, methinks.

Wealth is being created but very badly distributed, to the extent that poverty is raising its ugly head. State institutions are treated like ballast that hinders the rise of certain people's private air balloons.

Occupying a State position brings with it the obligation to obey an unwritten code of State morality. The Mizzi-Schembri-17-Black imbroglio is of such far-reaching significance that it could wreak untold havoc on the State, its institutions and the country, to the extent that we end up with only pieces scattered here and there in the shadow of increasingly higher high-rise buildings.

Machiavellian politics

The Mizzi-Schembri imbroglio is history in the making. Somebody recently wrote an opinion piece (published in another newspaper) criticising Joseph Muscat for being Machiavellian. I disagree with the author of that piece, because he seems to think that Machiavelli proposed an amoral prince as an abstract model for real princes to follow.

Machiavelli might be understood as having meant that the end justifies the means, but the end itself was highly moral - at least for Machiavelli and those of his persuasion. The unification of Italy was such a high moral goal that some amoral behaviour could be tolerated.

Not so in the Mizzi-Schembri imbroglio, as the only goal is the lining of certain pockets through secret companies and secret bank accounts in shady jurisdictions: an absolutely immoral (not amoral) objective. The meaning very much depends on the context.

Idiom not Idiot

A retired auditor has been unduly criticised for using a Maltese expression which involves a prostitute. I think the criticism is stupid, and I shall say why. First, nobody in this country thinks that there is any MP who works, or has worked, as a prostitute or escort!

Secondly, idioms are what they are. One cannot change an idiom because its literal meaning can be at odds with its metaphorical meaning! This is nonsense. Idioms are meant to be understood metaphorically. If I say, 'Let us take the bull by the horns", I am not urging anybody to go to a corrida in Spain and literally take a bull by the horns! I am using a metaphor.

When we use the expression, "The prostitute (or chemist) gives you what they have" (literal and therefore ugly translation, I must say), we are not saying that the person to whom the expression is addressed is either a prostitute or a chemist. It is a metaphor.

Similarly, when that other idiom is used - that a particular person is behaving like a prostitute in a xalata - it is clearly a metaphor. Having to explain this is quite disheartening and sad.

Now, a couple of words on xalata. The word is taken directly from scialata which, according to my Sicilian etymological dictionary, means 'recreation' (recrearsi, animum relaxare) and derives from the Latin exhalare. But I have found in a Neapolitan dictionary that it can be used as a by-word for 'sexual act'. The different shades of meaning are probably all concealed in the word we Maltese use, in that highly interesting intersection between semantics and the unconscious.

However, I think it is this latent meaning which is found in this particular idiom, rather than the more mundane meaning of outing or spree that we usually reserve for it. The idiom does not refer to a prostitute on an outing or during the traditional spree following the feast of the village patron saint - it is referring to a prostitute who is busy working, pretending to have fun but in reality counting every minute till she finally gets to call it a day and go home.

The point is, idioms are metaphors and although educated people know this, not everybody is educated, and it is stupid to direct hatred at somebody who used a colourful idiom. It's saddening too. (There is a Lucio Battisti song, Anche Per Te, which delicately recounts the story of a prostitute who goes back to her pimp in the morning and the singer would like, Christ-like, to also die for her, even though he does not know how.)

My Personal Library (30)

Hayden White's The Content of the Form (1987) is an excellent, though high-brow, treatise on the problems of meaning in different historical epochs. White's ideas will be useful to future historians when they write about Joseph Muscat's political legacy.

(Incidentally, in Maltese, the word 'legacy' used in this sense should not be translated as legat, but as wirt or eredità. We use legat as a technical term, in the context of successions, if we want to refer to a personal bequest, something bequeathed in a will. When used in its everyday sense, not as legal jargon but to refer to political legacy, legacy is wirt not legat. This linguistic phenomenon is known as interference. One should exercise mental discipline and avoid it.)

Dr Muscat's political legacy will have a meaning which, if we apply White's ideas, will reside in "the content of the form", in the way that future historians will want their present to be the fulfilment of a past from which they will wish to have descended. I'm sure it will be a different past from the one Joseph Muscat is leaving them.