Talk about being divorced from reality. If there are two issues that really don’t galvanise the public, they’re neutrality and Partnership for Peace. Neutrality has been reduced over the years to one of those Old Labour buzzwords that can’t even be defined by the people who mouth them in party clubs and bars. And Partnership for Peace only got people a little over-exercised way back in 1996 when Alfred Sant – who it turns out hasn’t really resigned at all but will be back as Leader of the Opposition on 10 May when Parliament reconvenes – spent the better part of an election campaign banging on about it. His electors didn’t look at the details or even the general gist. They just heard our friend Sant rabble-rouse about how the Sons of Malta would be sent to do battle in foreign lands far away from their mothers’ minestra and washing machine, only to be returned in black body bags, and that was it.
Does anyone give a flying wotsit about Partnership for Peace now? Not at all – the only people I can see getting agitated about it are Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (yes, he’s still around like Darth Vader Mark I) and the Graffiti Movement. Even the Labour Party’s acting leader Charles Mangion, who is about to find himself in an ambiguous position when the Irrevocably Resigned leader comes out of his burrow to lead the Opposition, was quite measured in his words about neutrality.
That didn’t go down well with the worst prime minister in the entire history of Malta, who said that politicians who say the Constitution should be changed, in respect of neutrality, should specify their reasons and say the truth. I don’t know what he’s worried about, quite frankly, given that the Constitution can be changed only with a two-thirds vote in Parliament. It looks like KMB’s a great respecter of the rules when he wants to be.
Instead of getting yet another buzz-cut, why doesn’t he buzz off for good and leave us alone? We’re a little tired of having him return to haunt us at regular intervals when we thought we’d buried him politically 21 years ago. All these people clinging to the cliff-face of public life decades after they have been discredited... it’s unbelievable. I filched a book off one of my sons yesterday, about the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in southern Europe, and how people continue to accept politicians like this in the transitional stage. Given that we’re pretty new to democracy, maybe that’s what the problem is. I can’t see people like Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Anglu Farrugia being given airtime for the serious discussion of their views in England, except in a George Galloway role.
The reason that the Labour Party can’t continue flogging this dead-for-a-decade horse (like that other dead horse called Mistra) is not because the party is in tatters with a leader who says he resigned but is coming back to spook us on 10 May. It’s because people don’t care, full stop. It may come as a surprise to political parties on either side of the political fence, but they are not the ones who set the agenda.
People don’t suddenly start caring about something because it is important to the political parties. Some weeks ago, a business-cum-lawyer friend who spends his days and evenings circulating among the same tight crowd of movers and shakers and “important people” was all upset because, he said, “everyone is scandalised about the Mistra case and thinks that Pullicino Orlando should resign, so why are you saying that he shouldn’t?” I told him not to make the mistake of thinking that the Valletta crowd is “everyone”, and that in the much wider and very different circles I move in, nobody even mentions the subject, except rarely, and then only in passing and to crack a joke. I tend to guard carefully my ability to pick up general opinion, and in this case I was interested to see that the results of MaltaToday’s survey on the subject, published last Sunday, tallied with my own understanding of how the situation is seen.
Though MaltaToday attempted to work itself up into a scandalised rage, the fact of the matter is that well below 50 per cent of respondents from both sides of the political spectrum taken together think that Pullicino Orlando should resign, and a good chunk of those think that he should do so only if found guilty of corruption – which he won’t be, given that making telephone calls can’t be classified by any stretch of the imagination as corruption.
What I did find quite amusing is that some people who claimed to vote PN said Yes when asked whether they thought the Nationalist Party should kick him out. They are among those who haven’t yet grasped the niceties of parliamentary democracy, among which is the obvious fact that if the party kicks you out, you get to keep your seat and the party loses it. And hence that other fact that Niccolo Macchiavelli would have had no trouble discerning: that Pullicino Orlando, far from being the weakest MP is actually the one in the strongest position. And that’s why some people in the Nationalist Party would rather he left; it has only partly to do with the case itself.
So back to my original argument that the general public couldn’t give a euro-cent about all this, just as they didn’t give a euro-cent about Charles Mangion and Karmenu Vella and their flats for rent. If it doesn’t catch the imagination, you can forget it. The spectacle of Pullicino Orlando chasing Darth Vader round Malta and shouting at him in a studio while brandishing a press card caught the public imagination. The thought of him collaring Mepa officials just didn’t. I’m not passing a value judgement here; I’m just pointing out facts that are obvious to me because of the nature of my work.
Partnership for Peace? Deadly dull and boring. I had to pop down the road from the office for a nice sardine salad and glass of dry white before I could sit down and work up the enthusiasm to even key in the words, still less think about the subject. And since I can’t be enthused to think about it even now, I can’t tell you what I think – but given that for the last couple of decades I have operated on the principle that anything I find boring my readers do too, that doesn’t really matter.
If the soldiers like Partnership for Peace and think that it will open up their horizons beyond searching people at roadblocks and guarding concentration camps for illegal immigrants, then that’s fine by me. The only part of the debate – such as it is – that sparked the slightest bit of interest in me was Reno Bugeja’s question to my favourite government minister Tonio Borg (at least he’s given the foetuses a rest) on TVM’s Dissett a couple of weeks ago. Minister Borg explained – no doubt seeking to mitigate the fears of anxious mothers worried about body bags and minestra going to waste – that Maltese soldiers will volunteer for overseas missions and will not be sent “against their will”.
I exploded with laughter there on my sofa, shouting out loud with great merriment that the Maltese army must be the only one in the world in which soldiers are asked whether they would like to be sent somewhere or not (ghax inkella tmur il-mami tiggieled mal-kurunell – otherwise mummy will go and have words with the colonel). And Bugeja took the words right out of my mouth by asking Borg precisely the same thing.
Sadly, the sound of my barely controllable laughter allowed me to catch only a part of the reply: the part in which Borg looked surprised and wrong-footed at this unexpected come-back from his interviewer, given that he probably thinks asking soldiers whether they want to go or stay is a normal part of army discipline and, more importantly, politically and strategically a good thing. I just think that it serves as an important reminder of just what a bunch of spoilt brats we really are. God forbid I should point out to Tonio Borg that if you join the army, you take orders. And then they say that the Italian army is Europe’s joke. They haven’t met ours yet.
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And here’s my favourite quote of the week, from an article in The Times last Wednesday about Labour’s leadership contenders and their views about who won the referendum:
“A few months back, another leadership contender, Evarist Bartolo, had also made comments in this sense but his were in reply to the questions of a puppet on a satirical show.”
Oh please stop. You’re killing me.
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