‘F’ is for female (except in the initials: ‘WTF!!’)

I was there, you know. I saw it happen. And now I kick myself for not joining the dots sooner: for failing to spot the bloodcurdling hypocrisy immediately as it made itself apparent...

What? Oh, sorry, almost didn't realize you were there. But in case you were wondering: I was referring to that campaign meeting in Gharghur last Thursday... the one in which  the Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi made a public commitment to enact a gender equality bill as a matter of urgency.

Like most other journalists present, I seized on that particular detail as the lead for the ensuing news report. It was, after all, the only 'new' and remotely interesting thing to emerge from the event. Everything else that was said in Gharghur that night was... hmm, how can I put this? A little like 'Groundhog Day', for those of you who remember that movie starring Billy Crystal... only without very much in the way of belly laughs.

OK, maybe I am being a little unfair here. The trouble is that - probably unlike the rest of the audience - I had also attended the Sta Lucija meeting the night before... and another one in Birzebbugia a few days earlier... and it would be no exaggeration to state that the exact same points (in the exact same order) had been raised in all three.

These same points had also all surfaced multiple times in practically every PBS political debate in the past two weeks (and of course I had to watch all those, too). The upshot? Let's just say I have around 25,000 new jobs coming out of my goddamn ears at the moment, and if I hear the word 'Cyprus' again, I swear to God I'll declare war on the wretched place, even if I have to tear it to pieces with my fingernails.

So predictable have these awful meetings become, that when I arrived some five minutes late - parking in Gharghur being no less troublesome than parking anywhere else on this island - I asked another journalist if I had missed anything important.

The look I got in reply might have evaporated a small lake. What did I expect, it seemed to suggest? Did I really, honestly and truly expect anything other than the usual litany we can now literally rattle off by heart?

And sure enough I found myself reciting the same lines with him: "Now is not the time to take risks... look at what is happening in Spain and France... Joseph Muscat will take us back to the 1980s... Look at what he said about Cyprus two years ago..." .

At which point we really do have to ask ourselves: is this how it's going to be for the remaining five days of this blasted campaign? Are they just going to go on about how many jobs they would like to create in the next five years? (Reason I ask is because... well, it's a little like saying that "the cheque is in the post". Or "I won't pay you today, I'll pay you tomorrow...")

But of course, maybe there's some form of subliminal genius at work here that I'm just not seeing. Maybe... hang on, I think I've got it! Maybe they're trying to bore us all to death... you know, on the basis that dead voters can't exactly elect a Labour government, now can they?

Or maybe, just maybe... they just don't have anything else to fight this election on. And this in turn might explain why so very much of the PN's campaign is in fact based on pure fantasy: great promises of future projects (but don't worry, this time they really will happen... promise!)... dark threats of 'trouble' to come if people don't vote PN... and wild, almost otherworldly speculation about the various cataclysms a new Labour government will surely bring about... anything from pulling Malta out of the EU, to accidentally blowing up Marsaxlokk (and maybe half of Birzebbugia, too). 

Even the ongoing rumours of 'something really bad' in Joseph Muscat's private life - which the PN now swears it knows nothing whatsoever about... suggest that the Nationalists just don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to legitimate electioneering. It's become a simple case of 'Vote PN.... OR ELSE!' (with all the added pathos of not actually having very much to threaten us with, either).

Honestly, though. To talk about the PN campaign as 'abysmal' would involve having to redefine the word 'abyss' to signify something even deeper, blacker and more bottomless than anything ever directed by James Cameron. It is, in fact, the Ultimate Disaster Movie...

***

But that bit about the gender bill? That was both unexpected and interesting. And unlike the endless comparisons to (yawn) Cyprus, it represents an issue that actually affects people in the real world.

Not many people, I'll grant you; certainly not enough to have any noticeable effect on the outcome of an election. But hovering behind this bill is an underlying ideological point of principle which - when all is said and done - we do not normally associate with the PN at all.

The issue concerns equality - real equality, not the sort of tokenism we have come to expect from politics these days. At present, people who undergo gender reassignment therapy - that is to say, men who undergo sex change operations to become women (or vice versa... though in my ignorance I must confess I don't exactly know whether it's two-way traffic or not) face problems straight out of Catch-22.

Maltese law will recognize their 'new' gender when it comes to issuing, say, ID cards, passports or drivers' licences... but for reasons which seem to defy all known logical and rational considerations, that's about as far as Maltese law is willing to go.

In practical terms, these people will still find themselves regarded as men in the eyes of the law, no matter how much documentation they can produce to prove that they are, in fact, women. And the practical problems they encounter as a result are often traumatic, if not downright life-threatening. (Can you imagine, for instance, a transsexual sentenced to the male section of Kordin prison?)

Perhaps the best example to illustrate these well-documented problems is the case (a very sad story, if you ask me) of Joanne Cassar: a post-op transsexual who was denied the chance to marry by a local court.

To be honest the case is so deeply unpleasant that I almost don't want to even write about it at all. But here are the basic facts. Having had her ID card re-issued to reflect her 'new' gender identity - and though I say 'new', the reality is that this person would always have regarded herself as female... even if her physical anatomy suggested otherwise - she went on to apply to the registrar of marriages to have the banns issued to marry her long-term (male) partner.

The registrar refused, on the grounds that she was 'still a man', and that Maltese law did not permit same-sex marriage.

Now for the ugly bit. Cassar took her case to a local court, and duly won. The law courts recognised her sex change, dismissed the registrar's objections out of hand, and ordered the banns to be issued. What happened next? The Attorney General - who incidentally is legal counsel to government (which means that he acts on the government's brief, and as such his arguments are in reality the government's arguments, not his at all) - appealed against the ruling... and the Court of Appeals took the astonishing decision to uphold the earlier objection.

Joanne Cassar was left with no option but to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg... and anyone who has any experience of that institution will also know that it costs an arm and a leg to file a case there. So in the end, not only was Cassar herself publicly humiliated and made to pass through years of institutionalised psychological torture of the most sadistic kind imaginable... but she was also financially ruined in the process.

And she went through all that just to be able to marry the man she wants to marry. I mean, seriously, people... what sort of twisted country is this, anyway?

I have looked long and hard at this case, and I can safely conclude there is not a single saving grace to the shocking, appalling and disgraceful way Gonzi's government has acted in her regard. It is a classic case of bullying: nothing more, nothing less. But let us return to that Gharghur meeting, because if I go into any more detail regarding the sheer insensitivity, the mind-numbing ignorance and the ghastly, ugly, revolting prejudice shown towards this woman by ALL the instruments of 'justice' in this country... I think I might physically throw up.

So the moment the Prime Minister was asked - by a pre-op transsexual, please note - about the possibility of legislating against such blatant discrimination in future, the collective ears of around half a dozen journalists simultaneously pricked up.

Unfortunately I did not know at the time that the same government which now promises gender equality if elected, had also made written submissions in the ongoing case filed against Malta by Joanne Cassar. So I reported the matter as it sounded to my ears at the time... yes, if re-elected on March 9, Lawrence Gonzi would enact the bill tabled by Evarist Bartolo at some point in the next five years.

I also reported the fact (astonishing, with hindsight) that Gonzi even alluded to the ongoing ECHR case as a reason to pass this legislation with urgency: acknowledging that losing the case will de facto place Malta in the position of actively breaching a fundamental right.

What Gonzi didn't tell us in Gharghur, however, was that his own government had thrown all its considerable behind the Marriage Registrar who refused to issue the banns; and also behind the Attorney General who argued (successfully, much to the Court of Appeal's undying shame) that a person like Joanne Cassar should not be allowed to marry at all (no, not even to marry a woman, despite the same AG's opinion that she is 'still a man').

And not only did Gonzi's government argue so persistently against Cassar's right to marry - it even took the fight to Strasbourg, and resorted to the same shocking, depressing and above all FLAWED arguments in its written submissions to the ECHR.

You know what? I seriously believe I have never encountered anything quite so hypocritical in my entire life. It is an Oscar-winning performance in the category of double standards and two-facedness. So the same government which made this poor woman's life a living hell for the past seven years - denying her the ability to marry, humiliating her in public and forcing her to bankrupt herself in the fight for her basic rights - now claims to want to legislate in such a way as to allow her to do precisely that which the same government had stopped her from doing in 2006.... and again in 2008... and is still trying to stop her from doing, even as I write this article.

I am sorry, but this really is too much. Quite possibly the most utterly nauseating election gimmick in local political history, and I dare say enough to turn the stomach of even a sewer rat. In fact, it has upset me so very much that... screw it: I'm not going to write another word about it here (so there, too).

Instead, I will leave you with the reaction of Joanne Cassar herself, who posted this on her Facebook wall on Friday:

"Intom stess għidtu 'lbierah li kif tinqata' l-kawża jkollkom taċċettawha bilfors fil-parlament. Mela għalfejn lili ħalejtuni ngħaddi minn dan il-martirju kollu. Kissirtuni... mentalment, moralment u finanzjarjament. Shame on you Dr Gonzi... Nippreżentalek seba' snin karti mill-qorti ħa tkun taf mil-liema martijrju għaddejtuni u issa li ġejja l-elezzjoni ħa tipprovaw iġagħlu n-nies jemmnu li intom kontu warajja..."