It is unfortunate that Moviment Graffiti see every protest as an exercise in self-promotion. They have become Malta’s ‘rent-a-protestor’, the sort you see outside every summit meeting or Downing Street, whether it’s global warming, blood diamonds or the invasion of Iraq, wearing the universal uniform of the breed: dreadlocks, a large knitted hat, a vast cotton scarf and some shapeless clothes knocked together by somebody’s great-aunt in Nepal.
Yesterday’s anti-Gaddafi demonstration in Valletta was organised by Libyan people who live in Malta. They did not wish to make any statements about Maltese politicians, and that wish should have been respected.
Their decision to keep Maltese partisan politics out of it was the proper one, because they wanted demonstrators to raise awareness about the suffering in Libya, not score political points off each other, the government and the opposition. That sort of thing can be left to other forums, or to the organisers of other demonstrations.
Besides, it is quite possible for people of all sorts of political beliefs to have in common a hatred and fear of the Tyrant of Tripoli, and that is why the organisers and several of the demonstrators, me included, became so irritated at Graffiti’s stupidity.
By putting up their battery of ‘Shame on Gonzi and Muscat’ placards, with their photographs of the prime minister with Muammar Gaddafi (but no photograph of Muscat in the same position last August), they were asking fellow demonstrators to march beneath a declaration with which they might not agree. That was unfair to the organisers and to fellow demonstrators, a few of whom left rather than walk beneath a ‘Shame on Gonzi’ photograph when they were there to show support to the Libyan people and protest against Gaddafi not Gonzi.
Whether we vote Nationalist, Labour or AD – perhaps Graffiti will now vote for the revived Communist Party – all of us there shared a common sentiment against Gaddafi and that was the only statement we should have made, out of respect to the organisers. Perhaps here I should point out that though two Nationalist politicians turned up to the demonstration, Beppe Fenech Adami and Charlo Bonnici, there were no people from the Labour Party.
I could have easily turned up with a hundred placards emblazoned with slogans inspired by the Golden Years of Gaddafi, Mintoff and KMB, and handed them out. It’s not as though I don’t have a wealth of material filed away. But I didn’t, because that wasn’t the point. The point yesterday morning was Gaddafi’s behaviour towards Libyans, and not the prime minister’s (or leader of the opposition’s) behaviour towards Gaddafi. Those grudge-against-the-world people shouldn’t have taken their enormous Graffiti banner with them, either, because it’s the height of rudeness and stupidity to make yourself the focus of attention in an attempt at distracting others from those who really should be the focus: in this case, the Libyan people.
The hysterical abuse and insults by members of the Moviment Graffiti who were asked, politely, to replace their Gonzi/Muscat placards with something more appropriate to the demonstration were only too believable, sadly. People like that are terribly self-involved and one soon comes to see that they don’t really care what they are demonstrating about as long as they are seen to be demonstrating with a large Graffiti banner.
The individuals with whom I remonstrated seemed not to understand that if one wishes to join an organised demonstration, rather than a free-for-all, then one has to subscribe to the wishes, messages and sentiments of the organisers, and not come along with your own personal messages and try to impose them on others there who have different ideas. “It’s a democracy,” one of them told me, as I resisted the temptation to tell him that yes, I saw that democracy born and he didn’t, so I was more likely to know that for a fact.
Instead I tried to explain, to no avail as his anger mounted, that a democracy allows the Graffiti Movement to take its posters and placards elsewhere, there to stage its own protest demo. Democracy allows it, too, to try to hijack and gatecrash somebody else’s protest demo, but then democracy allows the organisers to ask them to use different placards or refrain from marching with them.
The trouble with the Graffiti Movement is that it doesn’t understand democracy, because people of the extreme left are as inherently totalitarian as those of the extreme right. The only freedom they understand is the freedom of everybody to subscribe to Graffiti’s views.
The Graffiti Movement should have the wisdom to understand that it does no good to any cause it supports publicly, but rather the opposite. When the Graffiti Movement turns up, others leave. They are about as welcome as Norman Lowell and Arlette Baldacchino. And that is exactly what happened yesterday. Some left, while the rest manoeuvred themselves away from Graffiti’s banner and Gonzi/Muscat placards.
Despite seeing the discomfort and annoyance of other demonstrators, including Libyans who don’t like to be involved in Maltese partisan politics, the dreadlocks and traveller-outfit brigade persisted defiantly. That convinced me they weren’t there because they care about the suffering and oppression of our neighbours, but because they care only about themselves. They’ve always got to be the main story.
Childishly – but then you would have to be childish to be involved in a group like that – a couple of them took great care to tail me through the demonstration trying to place a Gonzi/Muscat placard behind my head for the cameras. Because most of us carried posters about human rights and depictions of bloodied hand-prints, and wore normal clothes and no dreadlocks, this only made them look pettier and weirder.
As a friend remarked, you can’t take those Graffiti people seriously. Today they’re here with their placards protesting against Maltese politicians’ relationship with Gaddafi. But tomorrow, should the EU or the UN decide that military intervention is necessary to take Gaddafi out of the mix, they’ll be out with their anti-armed forces placards because they want to have it both ways.
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