The short-sighted inanity of Joseph Muscat’s sole pronouncement on the crisis in North Africa has been highlighted by the arrival in Lampedusa of 6,000 people fleeing from the upheaval in Tunisia.

That’s right: 6,000. Given that they could more easily get to Malta, where they will discover immediately the fatuous meaninglessness of the refrain ‘Malta hanina, hobza u sardina’, I imagine that by now Muscat has understood that the crisis will provide him with tourists, all right, but not the sort he expected.

When I wrote, at the start of the Egyptian revolution, that Gaddafi must be pretty worried, sandwiched as he is between two states in the process of ousting dictators (and which have since had them unceremoniously removed), two friends who travel often to Libya on business text-messaged me to say I didn’t know what I was talking about.

They said that Gaddafi keeps unrest at bay with handouts, a sort of panem et circenses approach to controlling the proletariat, but without the circuses.

And it’s without the understanding, too, that the fire in the neighbouring states was not started by the proletariat, but by those with enough education to understand the precise nature of their deprivation. The internet can have no effect if there is no understanding of how European democracy works (or doesn’t).

Now, as I write this, the news has broken that there are riots in Benghazi, Libya’s ‘second city’. They began after the arrest of a human rights campaigner, and no doubt were much encouraged by what had happened elsewhere. You can’t blame the people of Libya for thinking that if their next-door neighbours did what seemed to be impossible only two months ago – get rid of Ben Ali and Mubarak – then they might conceivably get rid of Muammar Gaddafi.

Perhaps – but it seems that there is more fear and less education in Libya than there is in Tunisia and Egypt, and that the net effect of the panem et circenses approach to government has been to create a sort of mass apathy in which many people are not interested in democracy because it means they’ll have to work. This is the understanding, at some fundamental level, that rights come with obligations.

The pro-Gaddafi protesters were out immediately in response to what was happening in Benghazi, chanting against Al Jazeera, which is supposed to have been a key player in raising awareness about the riots in other Arab states and so promoting support for them.

Meanwhile, the revolts and riots have spread to Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Algeria. These are not known for their tourism markets, so we have had no more stupidities from the leader of the Opposition. Perhaps he is restraining himself or he is being restrained by others.

It would be fascinating, however, to know what his notoriously anti-EU shadow foreign minister, George Vella, thinks about all this, if only he would tell us.

Perhaps he will say that it is in the national interest – Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox – for Malta to help shore up Gaddafi’s regime.

The fence is an uncomfortable place to sit

Joseph Muscat is keeping his party on the fence on the matter of divorce. He thinks we won’t notice because he tells us that he is “personally” in favour of divorce.

Well, as Arnold Cassola correctly remarked on Bondiplus last Monday (although in Italian), who gives a flying wotsit about politicians’ “personal” opinion about divorce? This is politics, not a living-room conversation, and so concrete decisions and action are required. We don’t care whether an MP likes or doesn’t like divorce. We want to know whether he or she will vote for or against.

The worst of the waffling comes from the Labour benches, where MPs have been left without direction from the party. Because there is no Labour Party position on divorce, its MPs have been reduced to saying that they are “personally” for or against, lest their opinion be confused with the party line.

I cannot see how anyone can take Muscat and his party seriously on the matter of divorce. It has been obvious from day one that if he is truly committed to divorce legislation, as opposed to posturing to attract ‘liberals’ with slightly more than half a brain cell between them, he would commit his party to it. But he is reluctant to do this for two reasons. The first is that most of his MPs are violently opposed to it, although in the main they are saying nothing so as not to openly contradict him. This means he cannot include divorce legislation in his 2013 electoral programme. The second is that most of Labour’s core support, which lies in the ferociously rightwing, insular and conservative socio-economic group DE, is also opposed to divorce.

So Joseph Muscat, like Sant before him, has, through his attempts at having it both ways, ended up being painted into a tight little corner instead. He has tried to weasel out of it by saying that he can’t say what will happen beyond 2013 – perhaps he will hold another referendum; perhaps he will convince all his MPs to vote for divorce, blah blah blah.

It is all so weak, flaccid and unconvincing. Muscat is about to discover that if you wish to model yourself on Mintoff, you can’t do it with Joseph Muscat’s personality.