Europe: your credibility is at stake, too

This is an open letter to Members of the European Parliament: in particular, the ones who who will ultimately evaluate Tonio Borg's suitability to the role of Commissioner for Health and Consumer Affairs.

Naturally, the rest of you are more than welcome to tag along for the ride, too... although some of you (at least the regular readers of this column, should any still exist) might find much of what follows to be vaguely familiar.

OK: from the outset, let me clarify that it is only the 'health' part of that portfolio that actually concerns me. I neither know nor care how many 'affairs' Tonio Borg has ever had with European 'consumers' (yet there I was, happily thinking that European directives were all about boring stuff like the precise angle of curvature of an EU-approved banana. Who would have ever guessed that there was an entire department dedicated to 'extra-marital affairs within a free market context'... and that none other than our very own Tonio Borg would one day be considered for the post? Amazing, I must concede...) 

But like I said, it's the other half of the job description that I worry about. You know: Tonio Borg's suitability to administer to the health needs of around 500 million European citizens, and all that.

For yes, it is true: I am not without my own eyes and ears in Brussels. I am perfectly aware that the same Dr Borg has been rather busy this past week: trying to convince you all in private meetings up there in Brussels that... oh, all that stuff he said just a few years ago, about entrenching Malta's misogynistic abortion law into the Constitution? All those attacks on people like former EU Health Commissioner Emma Bonino... whom he accused of pursuing a private agenda to force Malta to introduce abortion against its will? All the open contempt and disdain he expressed for homosexuals in Malta's parliament? Or the time when he insisted (banging his fist on the table, as I recall) that Green Party secretary Arnold Cassola should resign from his post because the European Greens are pro-choice... so by association, it meant that he was pro-choice, too...?

He didn't mean any of it, you know. Of course not! How silly of us all, to have taken it so seriously at the time. Why, it was just some random stuff he felt he had to say... you know, not to fall foul of Malta's unreasonable moral majority, which could conceivably have failed to elect him in every election since 1992 had he actually told the truth about his views on women's health (as it seems he told you lot this week)..

Now, if you don't mind, a small digression for the benefit of local readers who (unlike yourselves) were not actually present for those meetings, and therefore have no idea about this remarkable double life our former Home Affairs Minister has been leading for the past 20 years.

I'm not joking, you know. The above is indeed the line that Dr Tonio Borg has been plugging behind closed doors in Brussels this week. And I am told he has employed around 20 lobbyists, too, to hammer that same message out for him. Even as I write they are repeating to every MEP with ears to hear that: Hey! Our Tonio isn't even half as conservative as he made himself out to be when speaking to a different audience back home. That was all just a façade he had put on at the time, to keep himself from getting excommunicated...

Wait, it gets better. At one point, Tonio Borg was even heard saying (words to the effect of) 'all Maltese politicians have to pretend to be anti-choice extremists, because otherwise they would be committing political suicide'... the argument being that, if Maltese politicians feel bullied and intimidated (poor things) into maintaining an external veneer of uncompromising political conservatism, it is not because they themselves are really so uncompromisingly conservative... don't be daft! It's just because of what he now describes as "the general situation in Malta"... 

Excuse me for a second while I reach for the sick-bag under my seat... Ugh! Sorry, just couldn't help myself there...

OK, now where was I? Ah yes, those meetings with MEPs in Brussels. It seems that, while he wasn't busy trying to reassure liberal politicians that he only puts on the 'conservative dinosaur' outfit for the benefit of the folks back home, Tonio Borg also assured the same MEPs that he would, as Commissioner, ensure that European policies related to LGBT people and women's sexual and reproductive health would continue in the current vein, without any impoverishment to the policies and programmes.

Yes, including all those policies and programmes he himself has criticized throughout his career. The ones that insist on women having reasonable access to safe abortions throughout the developing world... everywhere except Malta, in fact... or in other words, the Millennium Development Goals, which Borg has routinely lambasted Labour MEPs for supporting because they include a single passing reference to abortion...

Oh wait, how silly of me. That's all ancient history now, right? It seems the new and improved Tonio Borg has finally seen the light - from one week to the next, and by an amazing coincidence, only when he felt threatened by the loss of a Commissioner posting - and in his sudden newfound sensitivity to women's issues, we now have straight it from the horse's mouth that all his previous comments on the subject can now be safely ignored. It was just a lie for the benefit of his audience (which incidentally makes me wonder: how can we be sure that Tonio Borg's assurances in Brussels weren't also lies... for the benefit of a different audience with different expectations?)

Right. Now that I've overcome the urge to reach for that sick-bag again, I must say I am rather looking forward to hearing Tonio Borg say all that again in public... and I have no doubt the rest of Malta will be rather interested in hearing it, too.

And this brings me to the reasons for this open letter. Would one of you MEPs possibly be so kind as to ask Dr Borg a few questions on our behalf during that hearing? For instance: in those meetings he told you that he would have no difficulty separating his purely private views in matters such as abortion, from his public responsibilities towards the health and safety of European women. So can one of you kindly ask him why he found the selfsame separation so utterly IMPOSSIBLE throughout his 12-year stint as Home Affairs Minister?

The entrenchment issue is again perhaps the best example. His rationale on that occasion worked out roughly like this: "I, Tonio Borg, am of the opinion that any woman who terminates her pregnancy at any stage, and for whatever reason, should be sentenced to up to three years in prison. And because this is the opinion of Tonio Borg- and therefore obviously right - I shall simply assume that it is shared by all the country equally. But of course, there might come a time when some people no longer agree with me as whole-heartedly as they should. So I will now propose making it as difficult as possible for these people to actually change this law in any imaginable detail. And guess what? Being so generous and all, I shall even give the entire country the opportunity to express their full and undivided support for my humble proposal... IN WRITING, by the end of the month..."

Oh, and just in case you think I am writing this in satirical vein... think again. He really did all those things, you know: this is how it was reported at the time: "'The government will propose that the banning of abortion is included in the Maltese Constitution," Justice and Interior Minister Tonio Borg told a national conference on The Well-Being of the Unborn Child yesterday... Dr Borg called on all groups and organisations that wish to support this proposal to come together so that "it will be a proposal put forward by civil society, trade unions, NGOs, private organisations and will eventually be implemented with the full support of the people'" (The Independent, 7 May 2005) 

But there is another reason for this letter. It's not just that I seriously worry (believe me: I really do) about how European minority groups might be affected, if they have to depend for their needs on the whims of a man who has time and again proved incapable of leaving his own private prejudices at the door. Oh no: I am much more worried about what would happen to my country, should the European Parliament approve the view that it's OK to treat Maltese using a different yardstick from the rest of Europe, because... well, we're not really Europeans at all.

And that is in fact the impression you will be cementing if you accept the argument that Tonio Borg's wildly misogynistic/homophobic actions and utterances were acceptable because they took place in a Maltese context ... though they are not acceptable in the context of Europe.

Excuse me, but... where, exactly, does that leave us here in Malta? Are we still considered European citizens? Or have we suddenly been demoted to something manifestly less... a sort of second-class tier of European citizenship, whereby we are saddled with all the responsibilities of membership, without experiencing any for the benefits? 

The reason I ask is that (judging by what I am told about the feedback during those meetings) it seems that MEPs were content to simply accept Borg's patently absurd (not to mention obviously untrue) explanations in those meetings. And this leads me to believe that you must all really think that we are, in fact, as mediaeval and retrograde as Tonio Borg (of all people) made us out to be, for his own purposes,  in front of his new European audience.

But this is the overwhelming irony in everything Tonio Borg told you about us this week. I won't bother pointing out that it was all a shameless lie from beginning to end... that he really is as inflexibly regressive as the reputation that preceded him to Brussels... but I will point out what you should (and hopefully, did) have already worked out for yourselves.

Malta is NOT the backward, mediaeval country that Tonio Borg would have you all to believe. Quite the contrary: it is a forward-looking country of people who aspire to enjoy the same cultural standards as our counterparts in the rest of the EU.

For instance: one thing Tonio Borg certainly didn't tell you is that, when he embarked on that awful entrenchment crusade (and trust me, unlike you lot I experienced it in person - it was like living through the 18th century Salem witch-hunts, only slightly more hysterical) is how he was visibly shocked when the country failed to actually return the endorsement he so clearly expected.

An online poll at the time (on a rather conservative newspaper at that) had indicated a 60% majority AGAINST the entrenchment proposal. Now, I ask you: if Malta was as backward a place as Borg describes it - to the extent that he felt compelled to publicly toe a regressive line, for fear of political reprisals - surely the proposal would have been welcomed in open arms?

Make no mistake, my fine European friends. We were certainly not a retrograde nation in 2004. We had just joined Europe, and we had voted 'Yes' in that contentious referendum in part so that we could move FORWARD as a country. Not backwards, as in fact happened.

Do I need to add that the whole idea of EU membership had been sold to us in the first place as a guarantee of greater emancipation and progress? Well, I (to my shame, I admit) actually believed that at the time. I thought EU membership really was necessary for my country to slowly shake off the apron strings that had traditionally kept us so closely attached to our past.

Can you therefore imagine the sheer dismay among Malta's liberal community, when not only did we fail to progress as a result of accession... but instead found ourselves hurtling backwards in time, to an age when women were treated as little more than extensions of their husbands' property?

Oh, and another thing Tonio Borg lied to you about in Brussels. The Maltese liberal community (or 'liberal elite', as he is so fond of describing us) is much bigger than he gave you all to understand, you know... to the extent that for all the 'backward culture' Borg described to you in those meetings, we actually approved divorce in last year's referendum... despite the same Tonio Borg's best efforts (both before and after the referendum) to prevent it from becoming reality.

And this is what I truly fear will happen if Tonio Borg becomes a Commissioner of Public Health despite his manifest unsuitability on a variety of fronts. It would illustrate that the European Parliament (no less) now recognizes that what is 'acceptable' in Brussels is 'unacceptable' in Malta... and vice versa. It would be tantamount to saying that it's OK to discriminate against gays and women in that little backwater island you call a country... just don't presume to come here to Brussels and treat European women and gays the same way.

Well, if it's OK to discriminate against Maltese but not Europeans... what is that, if not a public affirmation that Malta is not really an EU member state at all?

And this, ultimately, is what I fear you will be really deciding next week. Not whether Tonio Borg is suitable to be a European Commissioner for Health; but whether the Maltese are culturally suited to be part of the European Union in the first place.

One perforce excludes the other. So choose wisely, my friends. Choose well.