One cannot overstate that Malta’s extreme smallness makes our sovereignty an unusual case. It exists as a fluke, as a freak of history.

If we learn good management and behave correctly, we can turn our smallness to our advantage. If we learn how to manage our islands intelligently, we can capitalise on our territory’s small size by reducing overheads that burden bigger countries. Traffic and internal transportation in general are examples of this kind of thinking. But, sadly, it seems we haven’t got a clue.

Then, there’s correct behaviour. This depends on two, inter-related factors, one external, one internal: foreign policy and the rule of law. In both, it seems our national sagacity matches that of a school of goldfish. In the sense that goldfish in small bowls open and close their mouth a lot, but they’re not known for ever conveying anything, meaningful or otherwise.

In all this dark mediocrity, Bernard Grech’s FATF letter offers a glimmer of hope. Please bear with me; I’ll shortly and briefly explain why.

 

Our foreign policy

Being not just neutral(ised) but also a “non-power”, Malta has the potential – at the moment, untapped – of serving as go-between. The lack of military and political power endows us with great moral clout, which has been used in the past.

Consider at least two moments from the last thirty years: Malta under Eddie Fenech Adami hosted the Reagan-Gorbachev summit which symbolically ended the Cold War, and Malta under Lawrence Gonzi offered to mediate a ceasefire in Libya ten years ago.

Nothing of the sort has happened since 2013. Muscat’s Labour first and Robert Abela’s now, seems completely oblivious to this aspect of Malta’s sovereignty. The two benighted Labour leaders seem acutely unaware of the international dimension to Malta’s political existence. They’re engrossed in petty politicking and seem to think of Malta as an autonomous vassal state more than as a sovereign country.

Not only has Malta under Labour failed to reap the benefits of a foreign policy that actively pursues peace, security and social progress among all nations. It has also managed to quarrel with the world’s most powerful nation. In other words, not only did it not make any profit; Malta has actually incurred a loss.

These are clear signals of, at best, a naïve approach to foreign affairs. The fact that the current Prime Minister appointed Evarist Bartolo to the Foreign Office betrays an absolute lack of understanding of the office’s centrality to our continued existence in the international arena.

Mr Bartolo spent his entire political career focussing on the education sector – one may agree or disagree with his policies, but nobody can deny that he had acquired a wealth of knowledge over the years. That wealth was binned, for reasons that are obvious and, all in all, puerile. And Mr Bartolo found himself heading a department the workings of which were completely new to him.

And then, late last year, the Prime Minister reportedly put his foot in it. The press appears to have understood that Malta led on the United States, in the sense that it was willing to sign an agreement regarding military personnel (so much so that US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper came personally to Malta), but then backed away. This is simply not done. Not just with the US – with nobody. It even goes against one of our culture’s tenets: irġulija. And since there’s no central body in international relations that enforces international law or behaviour generally, the international system depends on concepts that are close to our irġulija notion.

In international relations, lack of irġulija is known as “unfriendly acts”. Malta acted in an unfriendly fashion toward the US even though it did not break international law – but that’s exactly the point! An “unfriendly act” is, by definition, a “conduct of a subject of international law which inflicts a disadvantage, disregard or discourtesy on another subject of international law without violating any legal norm”.

Last autumn, there was a lot of talk of a possible link between this diplomatic faux pas and financial-services blacklisting. The Prime Minister dismissed the idea, denying it outright. Now we know that, at best, his judgment was wrong. More probably, he was lying through his teeth.

 

Rule of Law

While the Prime Minister was busy souring relations with a country that has always been friendly, the Government was busy dismantling even the semblance of rule of law in the country.

Yes, everybody is bored to tears hearing about the rule of law. But politics is not entertainment; politics is survival. For entertainment, there’s Netflix or “the other stuff” (or both). Real life’s tough, and nothing happens just because the viewer desires instant gratification. So we have to face facts and analyse the situation as it is, not as one would wish it to be.

The country has become a reputational bog, its good name now only a distant memory. The fact that Muscat has managed to get away scot free has become an indelible stain on our national honour. As Evarist Bartolo once insightfully reminded us (quoting the Romans), in our country there’s a law for the gods and a law for the animals. This glaring national weakness makes us vulnerable to attacks by other nations. Not military or legal attacks, but on the level of honour, of irġulija, of “unfriendly acts”.

This is the difference between autonomous vassal states and sovereign countries. For sovereign countries, the exercise of sovereignty implies that how you manage your internal matters impacts your external image and the respect other countries have for you.

Consider the Americans, who had no qualms with impeaching President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and President Donald Trump twice, the second time only a few months ago. Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and Trump were the world’s most powerful people, and yet their own country (the most powerful in the world) deemed it natural to charge them for politico-legal misconduct.

Then consider the Maltese, who seem unable to find the moral strength to charge a former Prime Minister with misconduct, when it’s obvious to one and all that, at best, he protected his two closest allies when they were caught red-handed owning a setup composed of trusts and offshore companies clearly meant to launder dirty money.

Who can blame other nations for concluding that the Maltese are spineless midgets who can’t be bothered with proper, serious conduct, whether internally (rule of law) or externally (acting friendly)?

 

Bernard Grech’s FATF letter

In this darkness, Bernard Grech’s FATF letter glimmers like a candle of hope. Dr Grech did the only patriotic thing a loyal Leader of the Opposition could do when the country’s sinking into such a bog of stinking bad administration.

Dr Grech put himself in the shoes of foreign nations and worked out the equation:

(shoddy foreign policy) + (even shoddier rule of law) = untrustworthiness.

He then saw something even more important. It’s human nature to generalise: a country is more often than not equated with its government. If nobody speaks up, it means that not a single Maltese cares about proper conduct.

So he looked at the options available to him, and chose the best weapon in his arsenal. The Opposition Leader doesn’t form part of the State’s Executive branch: the constitutional and political structure of the country dictate that his options be limited.

And yet, restrained by these constitutional limitations, Dr Grech went for the strongest option. He wrote a letter in which he delivered a most important message: not all the Maltese are untrustworthy; many want a functioning political system that respects a normal level of rule of law.

The letter per se has little practical consequences. But it would be naïve to apply that yardstick. The issue here is moral. Bernard Grech defended this country’s honour – the honour of us all. He made it known to the world that not all Maltese are crooks. Contrary to impressions, there are Maltese who uphold integrity and legality.

A friendly country like the US will have taken note of the Opposition’s statement. But it has also to contend with current reality: even with all the goodwill in the world, the West cannot accept the present Government’s approach.

Lastly, Bernard Grech’s call for a national effort is, frankly, the only rational way forward.

 

Maltese Quirks (15)

A couple of weeks ago, Maltese discovered that 97% of Maltese adult citizens consider Maltese as their first language, and they were surprised!

No irony now: it seems Maltese find it easier to speak Maltese but easier to read English. Unwarranted changes to Maltese orthography have probably caused this.

Schools should recalibrate the world-vision they impart to pupils. The sun has long set on the British Empire – the message is ultra-clear in James Bond movies (in which Britain flexes its muscles secretly and by fighting a phantom organisation called “SPECTRE” – a cute way of inoculating the populace to the Empire’s demise) and Johnny English movies (in which Britain has no more muscle to flex and just gets by, thanks to sheer good luck mostly).

Malta’s an independent country. And as all independent countries, it should have its own language, because having an own language is the hallmark of independence. The fixation on using (pidgin) English (with a horrendous accent, to boot) between us bares the feelings of insecurity and shame about our independent existence in the international arena.

One last point: it’s a great idea to have Maths and Science exams in both Maltese and English. We’re finally moving toward what’s considered normal in mature countries.

 

My Personal Video Library (16)

Evil (Ondskan, 2003) is set in 1950s Sweden, and the protagonist – a secondary-school boy who’s regularly beaten by his stepfather – gets expelled from school for violence. His mother sells almost all her heirlooms and sends him to an elite boarding school, where discipline is brutally enforced by the Sixth-Formers. The boy doesn’t take the bullying lying down, and, despite numerous difficulties, manages to graduate. He returns home and we’re given to understand that he kicks out his sadistic stepfather.

The mixture of psychology and ideology in this Swedish movie’s good. The movie’s ideology’s egalitarian, as befits Sweden, where they practise Jantelagen (the “Law of Janten”), and its protagonist’s character develops as the story progresses. Based on a popular Swedish novel, Evil is a Bildungsroman, the story of a youth’s passage to adulthood. But, being semi-autobiographical, it denies the viewer proper catharsis. The fact that we can only guess that the protagonist beats up his stepfather, without actually witnessing the feat, robs the movie of a potent climax. That said, Evil’s a movie I recommend.

(You’ll also get to listen to 113 minutes of Swedish – you don’t get that experience unless you live there.)