I’m tired of all this fuss and bother about Sea Malta, and I’m quite sure that most of you are, too. Whether you have been able to work up enough interest to find out what exactly is going on, or not, the sight or sound of yet another headline about the matter is probably enough to make you switch channels or turn the page. It all boils down to this: a lack of understanding of the role of chairman of a state-owned company, on the part of the erstwhile chairman. And, on the other hand, the inability or reluctance of the government entities responsible for Sea Malta and its privatisation to sit the chairman down and tell her: “Listen, if you don’t agree with the privatisation of this company, which we own and you do not, then please do the honourable thing and resign before we ask you to leave.” Instead, they appear to have gone ahead with the privatisation process behind her back, while she went ahead with her own plans behind the backs of those to whom she was answerable. By the time they did sit her down and speak to her clearly, it was too late. The chairman had already begun to operate under the delusion that she had more rights over the company than the owners did, and the owners felt cornered and behaved accordingly. This was a very odd mess, indeed.

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I am not qualified to say who is right and who is wrong as to whether Sea Malta should be privatised or not: ex-chairman Marlene Mizzi, who thinks it should not be, or the government, who thinks it should. Yet I do know this: when you are engaged to do a job, you either do it as instructed by those who engaged you, or you get out. You do not behave as though the company is your own to do with as you think fit, while ignoring the instructions of those who own it, or who represent the owners (in this case, the government of Malta), because you think that you know better than they do. You might be right, you might really know better than they do, but that’s not the point. If I engage somebody to paint my ceiling white, and he paints it off-white instead, and then tries to justify this decision because he knows better than I do (yes, it has happened), I would be correct to fire him immediately.

In the context of private business, you do not receive instructions from those who pay you, and then do the exact opposite, without expecting to be sacked. Those who wish to run shipping companies as they please and as they deem fit, taking orders from nobody, not even from the owners, have only one solution open to them: to set up their own shipping company.

This may seem unduly harsh a judgement, but it is a straightforward assessment of what has happened here. Marlene Mizzi is an extraordinarily capable woman for whom I have a certain degree of admiration, but it is too obvious that she is accustomed to running her own show, taking instructions from nobody. She has managed the business she owns for many years now, has never worked for anyone else to my knowledge, and she took this approach with her to Sea Malta, without adjusting it to suit the very different set of psychological tools required for running a company owned by somebody else. This situation is compounded by the fact that the business she owns sells goods and not services. When you own a service company, you may be your own boss in theory, but in fact you have lots of mini-bosses who are always calling you up with instructions, and if you don’t follow those instructions to the letter, you might lose your payment. You quickly learn to follow them. This is very difficult for strong-willed people who may be cleverer than their clients, and even have a better grasp of the situation, but it has to be done, or the client has to be dropped. You can’t insist, with the person who is paying you, on playing the tune that you want, rather than the one he has paid you to play, no matter how much nicer and more appropriate your choice might be.

It is very often the case that one might have to follow instructions with which one does not particularly agree. One may try to persuade the owners of the company to concur with one’s point of view, but if this proves impossible, then forging ahead as one deems fit is not just foolhardy. It is wrong. This does not mean that one’s assessment of the best move forward for the company is wrong. It may very well be right. It is any attempt at thwarting the wishes of the company owners, by somebody who works for the company, which is wrong. There are some exceptions to this, for example when the company owners wish to behave in a way that would be harmful or prejudicial to employees or to the environment, or if they seek to break the law or make fraudulent tax declarations, but on the whole the fact remains that he who pays the piper selects the tune.

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I’ve always wondered why anybody would want to serve as chairman of a state-owned corporation. Why expend so much time and energy on something that can bring you little or no return, and that might even have a negative effect on your life? I can see that some might think of the kudos or the prestige, and that others might see it in terms of serving their country, but in most cases, one’s only reward when the term is up is a slap in the face with a wet fish. The private sector is a much better place to be. For a start, you get paid for what you do, and for seconds, you don’t end up the subject of political and media discussion. I’ve reached the conclusion, after years of observation, that anybody who comes from private business finds it next to impossible to make the transition to the state sector. The reverse applies too. Those who have spent a lifetime working in the public sector, in government and in politics, find it extremely difficult to adjust to the more stringent requirements, including demands for flexibility, of the private sector. Private and public are two different animals.

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Party politics have been off my agenda for months, not least because I suspect that you are as bored of the subject and the petty quibbling as I am. The minute we joined the European Union, the political parties pretty much faded into the background as far as I was concerned, and I have found it very hard to work up any interest at all. The big issues are behind us. Finally, if we don’t like it, we can leave – at least, if we’re young, single, childless and fairly mobile. And if we can’t leave, then we can ignore the pettiness of the political parties, secure in the knowledge that now there isn’t much they can do to damage the progress of our lives. However, they will continue to irritate us, if only as gnats and mosquitoes do, buzzing and biting and sometimes making peace and tranquillity impossible.

I have been briefly nudged from my torpor in just such a way by the sound of the minister responsible for illegal immigration, making embarrassing statements to the international and Maltese media. Meanwhile, on the other side of the political electric fence, the Leader of the Opposition claims wildly that, if we would only elect him in three years’ time, then he will wave his wand and magically solve the boat-people problem. Both men have made me want to pull the bed-covers back over my head, departure from Malta not being an option with my many obligations and responsibilities here, much as I would love to whiz off and not have to listen to any of this rubbish ever again. However, I am obliged to sit up and take notice. The chief shortcomings of the minister responsible, where this issue is concerned, are his eagerness to blame it all on Europe’s lack of assistance, his speaking of the boat-people as though they are inhuman cargo, and his failure to set up a simple communications exercise whereby these straight facts are driven home to the people of Malta: that our international and national obligations do not permit us (even if we could circumvent the moral issues) to (1) let refugees drown, (2) refuse to mount a rescue operation for those in difficulty in our waters, (3) send them back where they came from without due process, (4) treat them badly or refuse to feed them while they are here, (5) meet them at sea and give them enough food and fuel to reach Italy, (6) give them a Maltese passport and a ticket to the Italian mainland, where they will be free to roam as citizens of an EU member State.

Those are the minister’s failings. The Leader of the Opposition’s are equally grisly, and deserve the accusation of gross irresponsibility, because it is easy to say what you will do when in government when you are not in government and can promise impossible miracles. This is a familiar tactic of Alfred Sant, who promises hat-tricks while in Opposition, like an alternative to VAT and an alternative to membership of the European Union. Now he is telling us that he has a just-add-water solution to the immigration problem. Perhaps he would stand up and tell us, in clear and unequivocal language, just what this solution might be. I rather suspect that it is one of the six suggestions listed above, which would run us into the sort of international difficulties that Dom Mintoff got us into in the days he was prime minister.

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All of Malta’s far right groups, which are now springing up like mouldy mushrooms, list a return to the traditional values of the past among their many missions. I shudder at the very thought. Even the suggestion of swapping life in 2005 for life in 1975 is enough to make me shout “No way!”, let alone go back to the dark days when people always had to conform and do as they were told, when nobody travelled and social life was a dance at the local hall once every six months if that, besides which women were so constrained that they only lived out a fraction of their potential. Rather than thinking of the past as some golden paradise, I link it with repression, oppression, lack of personal freedom, invasion of privacy, social and religious control and all sorts of other undesirable things that we have since more or less thrown off, so that the developed world may move forward – as it has in fact done since. It is an undisputed fact that my sons have much better lives, more opportunities and greater prospects than I did at their age, and I was fairly privileged compared to others of my generation. It is a source of amazement to me that the aspects of the past that I find so reprehensible are the very ones that the far right find desirable, beginning with social control and ending with lack of personal freedom, particularly where women and other inferior human beings are concerned.

If people who lived through ‘the past’ are quick to insist that they were happy then and asked for nothing more, then perhaps it is because they did not have the imagination to see that there were different ways of living, and that it didn’t have to be like that. It is precisely because they are not complacent about their lot in life that so many thousands of people from Africa are enduring severe hardship and risking death to try for a better life in Europe. All the great steps forward that have been made in the past, and are still being made in the present, are made by those who are not content with life as it is, and who feel that matters can be improved. If we were all born complacent from the beginning of time, then we would still be living in caves, eating charred animals, and being happy with it. It is discontent, coupled with the drive to change things, which leads to the bettering of one’s lot.

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I was reminded of just how poor the ambitions of the far right in Malta really are when I read this excerpt from The Times of Malta of 6 September, 1955, which was reprinted in The Times last week. I will have to quote it to you in full, so that you will see what I mean, particularly when you remember that this was a news story in a national newspaper.

“Dr Thomas Balogh, the economic expert engaged by the Malta Labour Government, has been residing with his wife and two sons at Blanche House in Zejtun Street only a few yards across the street from the side of the church and not on the sea front. The community of Marsaxlokk was scandalised when Dr Balogh was seen in the balcony attired only in bathing trunks. There was further adverse reaction when Dr and Mrs Balogh, leaving their house to go swimming, went out in public to walk some distance to the sea inadequately attired – Dr Balogh in trunks, Mrs Balogh in a two-piece bathing suit plus a little bolero. Reports were lodged with the police, but apparently without effect because Dr Balogh was again seen in the balcony improperly dressed, while his boys were seen through the open windows at ground level running about in the nude.” It sounds like Iran, with people spying through the windows of your house to see whether your small sons are naked in their own home, and filing police reports if they are, and where if you fail to cover yourself completely to step out onto your own balcony, scandal whips through the village, you are reviled and reported to the authorities for punishment. I can barely believe that this attitude prevailed just nine years before I was born, because it might just as well be another country. How easy it is to remember the simple good of life in the 1950s and to forget the bad that eclipsed it all.