The door’s over there...

Austin Gatt has just announced his intention to 'resign from Parliament' if the PN adopts a pro-divorce platform. Bring forth the embalming oil, maidens, and loosen your hair.

Personally I can think of several cogent reasons for Austin Gatt to resign, and not one of them has anything to do with divorce. Besides, I can’t help noticing a curious anomaly in his sudden affirmation of principles. Why bother resigning at all, when he’s already made it amply clear he won’t be standing for re-election? And why specify ‘from Parliament’... when his objection is actually to a possible pro-divorce position taken up by the Nationalist Party?

Well, I’ve been a journalist in this country long enough to know that politicians don’t answer questions. (If you need further proof, look up their ‘answers’, especially Austin Gatt’s, on the Parliamentary Questions website). So I may as well answer them myself.

Fact of the matter: Austin Gatt can threaten to quit parliament all he likes, because he knows it won’t make a jot of difference to anyone. His career as an MP is de facto already over – he pre-emptively announced this himself, in case he’s forgotten – and if he resigns before the election, his vacant seat will be promptly filled by casual election, and not by an Opposition MP. Besides, Dr Gatt knows perfectly well that the PN will in any case sooner cut its own throat than adopt a pro-divorce position, so his threat is by all accounts an empty gesture... the latest, one might add, in a long and illustrious career.

Naturally there may be other reasons why a Cabinet MP, not generally known for public arguing against divorce, would suddenly choose to do so now. And again, not one of them has anything to do with divorce. You can have all the fun you want playing guessing games, but what interests me more is his argument itself, and what it says about the PN as a whole. So let’s leave the guesswork for another time.

Like a cornered bear taking a swipe at perceived ‘baiters’, Austin Gatt at one point tries to undermine the ‘democratic credentials’ of the ‘Yes’ movement... which incidentally was founded by his own colleague in the PN. And like so many other Nationalists, he does so in the pained tones of a martyr at the stake: “I – labelled a conservative since I am anti-divorce (which goes to show the great democratic credentials of the pro-divorce lobby!)...”

Alas, poor Austin. But at the same time it is amusing to see him suddenly taking exception to the label ‘conservative’. Might I ask why?  Since when is calling someone ‘conservative’ an ‘anti-democratic’ thing to do? Has the word become an insult while Tonio Borg wasn't looking? And if not, why does Austin Gatt feel the need to ‘deny’ his own political persuasion before the cock crows thrice?

It's odd, because his entire argument is itself conservative to the very core. Most would in fact argue that an ‘anti-divorce’ stand is conservative by definition, for the simple reason that it seeks to ‘conserve’ the prevailing status quo. But Gatt’s article today transcends that practical definition by far, and even goes some distance towards decoding the PN’s political DNA for all to see... especially those who would define it (in public, anyway) as a ‘liberal party’.

Consider the following remark by Austin Gatt – who incidentally has been active within the PN since the late 1970s. “Basically egoistical, the (liberal) argument puts the individual before society and before the family and usually results in a ‘quickie divorce’ regime that, admittedly, is not being proposed by the pro-divorce lobby in Malta.”

Leave aside the obvious flaw – by his own admission, Gatt is objecting to legislation as it exists in other countries, and not as being proposed locally – and what remains is the very crux of the distinction between political ‘conservatism’ and ‘liberalism’ to begin with.

For on one point Austin Gatt is entirely correct: liberals do place the individual at the heart of the policy-making process. It is something they do consciously and publicly; and far from ‘egoistic’, their motivation is a desire to protect individuals from the egoistical impositions of others... even if these ‘others’ form the vast majority.  

It is conservatives like Austin Gatt who place society itself as the fulcrum of their belief, thereby reducing the individual to a mere cog in the social machine. For this reason, they will see no harm in occasionally seeking to limit an individual's freedoms, if it somehow serves what they think is the ‘greater good’. The divorce debate is itself a classic case in point, but there are others: consider the censorship arguments in the case of Stitching and Alex Vella Gera... especially the court ruling that “the values of a country cannot be turned upside down simply in the name of freedom of expression”.  

A liberal on the other hand would argue that ‘the greater good’ and ‘the values of a country’ are subjective concepts on which no consensus can ever be attained; and that in any case society exists for the benefit of the individual, and not as an end in itself. But I won’t bother delving in to any of that, if nothing else because political liberalism does not actually exist in Malta: at least, it is not represented by either of the main political parties, and only partially represented anywhere else.

It says a lot, however, that an essentially conservative politician doesn’t seem to realise that he is, in fact, conservative: not even when making fundamentally conservative arguments. It tells us that the Nationalist Party – which for reasons of history has embraced within its fold an assortment of non-conservative voters, though it often forgets their existence - is now uncomfortable with its own multi-faceted identity. Indeed, individual members are uncomfortable with their own colleagues, as has been time and again illustrated recently; and while Gatt is uncomfortable with the growing calls for divorce in his own party, many Nationalists I know are just as deeply uncomfortable with the ever-tightening noose that binds the PN to the will of the Catholic Church... and nowhere is this more visible than in Austin Gatt’s article itself.

And yet, Gatt can’t seem to see it. He claims that “the discussion in the party is not based on faith in some Catholic or Christian Democratic credo”. And then, in the very next sentence, he adds: “it is ridiculous to ask me to be a Catholic and vote for divorce”.

Well, what sort of ‘discussion’ are you having in your party, Dr Gatt? One which is ‘not based’ on Catholic faith... and yet in which individual MPs use precisely their Catholic faith as the pivot on which their entire stance hinges? And if the party is ‘big enough for one and all’... why do you also think there’d be no room left in it for you, if it takes up a position you don’t like?

These and other contradictions are perhaps inevitable, in a conservative party which doesn’t seem to know what ‘conservatism’ means. Either way, it is fast becoming evident to all (except perhaps to Austin Gatt) that the Nationalist Party can no longer sit comfortably bestride the two opposite poles of the political spectrum, as it has somehow done for the past 35 years. Discomfort is now the PN's most conspicuous feature. It is manifest in its every dimension -  from squabbling backbenchers, to irate former treasurers, to sparring local councillors, to embittered ministers (and former ministers), to clashes over divorce, over IVF, over honoraria, over everything.

Small wonder Austin Gatt would consider calling it quits. Maybe someone should be good enough to show him the door, and thank him for so perfectly illustrating the inner turmoil of a government that has long lost any sense of direction or purpose.