Joseph, you are so bloody wrong

Well, I was expecting this sooner or later. Gonzi’s stand last Sunday, in contrast to Joseph Muscat’s comments on migration, was commendable. 

I cannot understand what came over the man. He said that we should applaud the Italians and show we mean business. He interpreted Italian policy as a sign of strength. He is obviously unaware that minister Roberto Maroni is as mad as a hatter.
Muscat seemingly approved their decision to block the AFM from landing migrants saved from the high seas and taken to the nearest port of call (Lampedusa). 

The Italians as we all know have flouted international maritime law and blockaded Lampedusa against the AFM.  One Italian under secretary went as far as to link the proposed laying of an energy cable between Malta and the Italian mainland to the migrants’ issue. What gall.

The Lampedusa saga led many Maltese to question the arrogance shown by the Italians. Muscat was probably thinking that by embracing Italian arrogance he would appeal to the xenophobes, most of the Maltese by the way. It backfired.

In this regard Lawrence Gonzi – who is usually always tackled head-on by my unkind pen – has been very consistent on migration and migrants. Consistency is a good thing in politics.

When some years back his nephew in the Safi local council passed silly comments on a right-wing blog which were tantamount to racist remarks, the Prime Minister ruled his (nephew’s) position untenable and he had to resign.

Throughout his tenure the PM has always been consistent on migrants in general. Last Sunday he decided to uphold that belief and he lashed out at the Italian position which he rightly so described as illegal.

Now, politicians usually do not take positions which are not in synch with voters concerns. But when they do, you have to admire them.

I may disagree with Gonzi’s views on divorce, but at least we should say that he has been consistent on this too; and the consistency reflects the importance he gives to his religious views.

The same applies to his concerns over migrants and his politics about xenophobia.

On the latter I am in complete agreement. In fact it is a pity there are so many other points where we differ. Muscat’s reading on migration is wrong and more importantly it is far from admirable. He is looking not at the principles here, but at the voting trends and voting concerns.

And in this regard he does not win any brownie points, at least not from me. In politics people search for strong leaders, people who can lead and people who take decisions which are not based on voting concerns.

Muscat has a very good chance of winning the next election, but it has little to do with the Labour party’s ability to woo voters and votes, but rather by the Nationalist party’s policy of alienating voters, losing its grass roots and of treading on too many corns. It also has to do with the need to alternate power.

But if Muscat thinks that his words will not be scrutinised, he is very much mistaken. Over the last 23 years, the Nationalist campaign has managed to entrench an image in the psyche of the Nationalist militants.  It reads like this: everything that is Labour is ‘jaqq’.

It is the unfortunate side of years of repeated assaults on inculcating the idea that mediocrity equals Labour.

Muscat cannot move forward if he does not combat this perception.  He can do this in only two ways. The first is to prove to everyone that he is a leader before being a politician and the second – which is probably more difficult, is to prove that a Labour government can provide a sense of normality if elected.

The position Muscat embraces on migrants and migration is neither progressive nor moderate, and not even left wing. It is opportunist.

In the coming months, he must take into consideration every single word, every sentence and metaphor.

If he does not, he will be win the next election because people are simply angry, sick and tired of the PN. And then his government, if he manages to get elected, will be nothing but ‘gvern tal-intervalli’.

Leadership, foresight is what voters want.

***

(Father) Joe Borg is obviously wasting his precious time trying to defend his silly statement where he suggested to the Zwieg Bla Divorzju posse to use children to promote the fight against divorce.  He has explained that his reference to children had nothing to do with ‘tfal’ as we know them.

Now for good or for bad, I hail from the parish of San Guzepp in the heartland of Birkirkara like Joe Borg himself. There ‘tfal’ are known as children – children as in kids. He argues rather lamely that he was referring to grown-up children. Men and women, who had mothers or fathers who were separated or divorced.

But then this is not the issue. The issue is that Joe Borg has this two weights and two measures approach to everything.

If instead of Joe Borg’s electronic missal or email, it had been an email from the pro-divorce movement, there is little doubt in my mind that the media studies lecturer and Nationalist apologist would have found very good reasons to consider the whole issue a worthy news story.

Joe, as we all know, is not stupid. He knows how to argue and play with words. One should not expect the former public relations officer of the Curia in the turbulent 1980s to be in favour of divorce. Though he should be the last one to cry wolf if a newspaper has access to emails between key members of the No movement and decided to publish.

He and other members of the movement should not be offended if they are taken to task: more so by MaltaToday, a newspaper that has been in favour of the introduction of divorce from its inception in 1999.

No one is talking here of the lifestyles, past and present, of some prominent members of the No movement. If we were in London, the UK tabloids would sooner rather than later have already pasted the incompatibility of the lifestyle of those who preach one thing and do another. But this is Malta, and in Malta, the only individuals who transcribe these stories are those who have been blessed with being on the side of the administration.

Joe Borg of course shares the same opinion as others in Zwieg Bla Divorzju that MaltaToday is bullying the movement. 

Rather amusing, I thought: more so when the bullying seems to have been linked to the story about Joe Borg’s brother, a senior civil servant who was literally given the green light to take vacation leave to work for the no movement by the Office of the Prime Minister.

Bullying, it seems, is the interpretation given to reporting the news and investigating stories. But bullying is not the word to be used when referring to bile and diarrhoea on blogs by a certain merchant of hate.

Then again, one should not expect anything different from someone who compared Malta in the turbulent 1980s to war-torn Beirut.

This opinion was first published in the MaltaToday Midweek on 13 April 2011.