Gaddafi's crackpot diplomacy

Would Gaddafi need a MEPA permit to set up his tent in Malta?

Addressing a group of Italian models hired from an agency Gaddafi evoked the worse fears of the political right-wing, by conjuring the future of an Islamised Europe. A few hours later in the company of Berlusconi, he demanded the payment of €5 billion adding that otherwise “Europe would become African.”

So we have this fool who speaks like someone who has smoked too much pot, trying to extort money by making the cultural threats raised by the far right even more plausible. And he does so spectacularly. He does not abide to any protocol but his own and has turned his country’s diplomacy into a circus which sets up a tent in the various European cities where Gaddafi sells his wares to the highest bidder.

The exotic nature of his visits rekindles memories of a colonial past reinforcing the perception of the Arab as the “other”.

What strikes me most is the reception he is receiving from the likes of Silvio Berlusconi. Here is someone who is, for all intents and purposes, a dictator with blood on his hands who still refuses to sign the Geneva convention, and whose human rights record is abysmal.

He is also someone who plays political football with human misery, using the migration threat as a weapon to be used whenever convenient to stoke the fears evoked in his crackpot speeches. And he still receives the hand of friendship, perhaps in return for big business opportunities, arms contracts, or in the case of Berlusconi only God knows. But there is rarely any mention of human rights or the Geneva convention in these meetings.

And where does this leave Malta, Gaddafi’s only ‘western’ friend when he was still treated like a mad dog? Will our filial devotion and support that transcends the political divide, be ever rewarded by being included as a last stop in the Gaddafi and his Amazones world tour?

And were will he be setting his tent? Will he seek a MEPA permit? Any ideas on where he should set his tent?