Or should that be Italy’s man in Malta? Arnold Cassola appears to want it both ways. He wants to be an Italian politician, and at the same time, he wants to be a Maltese politician. Somebody should tell him that this is not possible. In Europe, and possibly in other continents too, though I wouldn’t know about those, political bigamy is not allowed. Your loyalty as a politician has to be to your own country, and in Dr Cassola’s case, his country is now Italy. He has chosen, and that’s the end of it.
I am perplexed to see that others, including Dr Cassola it seems, have not worked out this simple fact yet. They are talking and reacting as though Dr Cassola is a Maltese politician who has somehow, by a mysterious process, secured a seat in the Italian parliament, there to represent Malta and the interests of the Maltese.
Are we really that astonishingly uniformed? We should congratulate Dr Cassola, of course not as somebody who has won a victory for Malta, but as somebody who has won a victory for himself, for that is all it amounts to. I admire Dr Cassola for his success and his single-minded concentration on his political career, but I would admire him more if he were to stop trying to be both things at once.
Malta and the Maltese have no interest in the matter, except to take note of the fact that when Dr Cassola was faced with a choice between political loyalty to Malta and the interests of his political career, he did make that choice. He does not see it that way. In his remarks to journalists, he says that he made no such choice at all, though reading his words I was left with the distinct impression that he protested too much.
“Malta is my constituency,” he told a journalist from another newspaper. “My target is to continue working in Maltese politics with Alternattiva Demokratika.” No, Dr Cassola – you are now an Italian parliamentarian. Italy is your constituency – or more precisely, that part of Italy where you stood for election and secured your votes. In the Italian parliament, you do not represent the people of Malta, but the Italian people who voted for you to represent them in their parliament.
Am I the only one to consider Dr Cassola’s comment – that while sitting in the Italian parliament he will continue working in Maltese politics with Alternattiva Demokratika – to be shocking and his intentions to be very incorrect? Dr Cassola is to be paid handsomely out of Italian public funds, collected from the Italian taxpayer, to work for his Italian constituents, in Italian politics, for the good of Italy as a whole.
He cannot use his salaried time to work for Maltese politics, and commonsense tells us that there is a big question mark over the correctness of using his non-salaried time to this end. The simple fact of the matter is that you cannot be a politician in two countries. You cannot straddle the fence. You cannot have your cake and eat it.
In a dispute between Malta and Italy – and there have been some such disputes, particularly over the matter of irregular immigrants and asylum seekers – on whose side will Dr Cassola be? He will have to be on Italy’s side, and not on Malta’s – because he is paid by Italy to work for Italy, and as an Italian parliamentarian, his duty is to represent to the best of his ability the interests of his Italian constituents.
They would expect no less, and we too should expect no less of him. Indeed, in such a situation, he would have to defend Italy’s interests against Malta’s interests, and we would have to respect him for doing so. Indeed, we would be wrong to respect him for doing otherwise, as one should not respect those who work against their country – his country in this case being Italy.
The fact that Dr Cassola has dual nationality and two passports makes no difference at all. As an Italian parliamentarian, he owes his only allegiance to Italy. He cannot be an Italian parliamentarian and a Maltese politician at the same time. John Profumo, who was the subject of political scandal in 1960s Britain, was Italian by blood – but he held a cabinet post in the British parliament, and was never considered anything other than a British politician. He did not give interviews to Italian newspapers, telling them that he would use his British parliamentary seat to work in the field of Italian politics.
Dr Cassola is a politician who happens to have a Maltese passport, and who has spent almost his entire life up to now in Malta, yes – but that does not make him a “Maltese politician”. A Maltese politician is somebody who works in the field of politics in Malta, with a view to getting elected. Quite apart from owing his allegiance to Italy rather than to Malta, this is something that Dr Cassola may no longer be able to do. I am given to understand that Maltese electoral rules bar from standing for election to the Maltese parliament those who have been parliamentarians elsewhere. I stand to be corrected, but it is a point worth examining, certainly.
Dr Cassola told his interviewer: “This was an experience that will enrich me as a politician”. I was much amused by his interviewer’s response that people elect politicians to deliver, and not to be enriched. I would have been far more amused, though, had the journalist picked up on the financial aspect of Dr Cassola’s very unfortunate turn of phrase. There are, after all, two meanings to the words “enrich me as a politician”, and though I am in no doubt as to what Dr Cassola meant, as an Italian politician he should learn to be more careful with his words.
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The government has offered doctors the hourly rate of Lm3.75 before taxes, in an attempt at tempting more of them to work part-time in the overburdened state hospital and clinics. Is this a joke? People pay roughly the same rate when hiring a cleaner from a professional maid service, with taxes.
The grey economy wages for cleaners and home-helps, meanwhile, are based on the rate of Lm2.50 an hour, untaxed. It is in no one’s interest to have these women subjected to taxes, because then they would refuse to work – as you would, because as soon as your registered earnings reach Lm600 a year, you are obliged to pay Lm550 a year in national insurance. Also, their earnings would be added to their husband’s, and more income tax would have to be paid. We would all be worse off: these women would not have the money they need, and those who engage them would be floating in a sea of domestic chaos.
To persuade a woman to come round and wash the floors and do a little light dusting, you have to hand her a tenner in cash for four hours of work, which by the end of it is more like three hours as she’ll spend 30 minutes settling in with coffee, a little light chat and getting her tools together, and then another 30 minutes winding up in the reverse order.
Those who are really desperate for help in the house even pay the cleaner’s bus fares or petrol costs, or pick her up and take her back home again. If they need a part-time job to help meet the rising costs of living in this island, the doctors would be much better off mucking in with a broom and a bucket. It’s highly skilled work, as my husband protests when I ask him how in heaven’s name he has managed to reach the age of 50 without learning how to sweep a floor properly (he then finds something pressing that he must do immediately, when I offer to teach him this basic life-skill).
For roughly the same take-home pay as the part-time wages the government has offered them, the doctors would spend their hours in more congenial circumstances, ensconced in somebody else’s comfortable home, having tea and a chat with the chatelaine, and cleaning up the mess, which is something the chatelaine has to do herself on most other days anyway. And after all that, they get a lift home or their transport costs paid. It beats sitting in a crowded health centre listening to the woes of strangers and looking down their throats at their septic tonsils, or examining their pus-ridden sores and their disgusting in-growing toe-nails.