A Dubai in the Mediterranean

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My colleague Matthew Vella has written a hard-hitting, uncompromising blogpost about the network underpinning Malta’s anti-divorce movement which should serve as an eye-opener to all those gullible enough to believe that old, terribly misleading, chestnut that the divorce issue “shouldn’t be politicized”.

Indeed, divorce doesn’t just throw us straight into the political arena (its rightful place to be taken up by serious parties) but also makes it patently clear that ideology is very much at play here.

Inevitably, I would say, when you have key government ministers making references to weeping Madonnas to bolster their argument. It’s not as if Tonio Fenech is some peripheral character in the Nationalist scheme of things who comes out of nowhere to play a ten-second cameo role.

As long as the divorce issue was confined to a couple of more-or-less cosmopolitan-minded PN-leaning opinion columnists, several people could live under the mistaken illusion that the PN was actually a very “broad church”, as the saying went. Liberals, we were told, could live comfortably within the PN fold. Quite evidently, to use another expression which has been flogged to death, the chickens have really come home to roost with a vengeance.

Can you really imagine any liberal in mainland Europe “living comfortably” with a government minister who so brazenly meshes potted logic and religious iconography to prove a political point?

And yet, here in Malta, land of topsy-turvy politics and home-grown idiosyncrasies where far-right leaders praise leaders of left-wing parties for “having their heart in the right place”, it’s quite OK for liberals to support politicians who wheel out their favourite religious icon as a political argument.

Right across the power networks in this fair land, people appease, look the other way, remain absolutely silent or attempt to convince you that “everyone’s the same at the end of the day, there’s no real alternative to the guys in power”.

There is, of course, a fairly straightforward reason for this state of affairs and it’s quite fitting that two central players militating in the Zwieg Bla Divorzju lobby group, André Camilleri and Arthur Galea Salomone, hail from the financial services and banking worlds. For when you look closely at the way things are panning out in this whole divorce saga, you get a rather precise picture of Maltese power networks in 2011.

This country is certainly neither Afghanistan nor Iran, as some frustrated individuals hyperbolically claim from time to time on online comment boards as a reaction to what they (rightly) perceive to be the ever-increasing meshing of church and state under the Gonzi administration.

The moniker “Taliban” has become a bit like the f-word these days, used so glibly that it’s become entirely shorn of its original meaning and, I suspect, taken with more than a pinch of salt by the people it’s addressed to. You can actually imagine Austin Bencini, that third horseman of the divorce apocalypse, brushing it off with a trademark “u ejja x’ezagerazzjoni!”

And yet this country under this administration doesn’t feel quite European either. For all our technological advances and glossy lifestyle magazines, the Enlightenment hasn’t quite taken root here.

And how could it when the movers and shakers, the guys occupying the hot seats over the past quarter of a century, have either appeased or enthusiastically embraced the Fenech Adami-Gonzi ideology, while most liberal thinkers and intellectuals simply look on as if nothing was amiss? It’s no surprise that compared to the fairly makeshift Yes camp, the No lobby appears to be a well-oiled machine: that air of respectability, the management strategy, the notebook full of contacts in high places, the direct links to the seats of power.

Matthew Vella was spot on when he homed in on the key factor underlying the divorce debate beyond the inconsequential arguments, technical niceties and convoluted logic: the power network which has successfully meshed Western capitalism and aggressive development with a blurring of the distinction between Church and State, turning Malta not into Iran or Afghanistan but into an altogether different type of place. Dubai.

More from David Friggieri

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Actually in all fariness, while convenient to immediately recall the Iranian, Saudi andTaliban clerics, the Mediterranean is no better. Apart from the three major Western European Mediterranean states of France, Italy and Spain who have achieved a degree of free and open societies at the costs of bloody revolutions, historical circumstances related to power struggles in other Mediterranean countries continue to shape the political and social life. One only has to recall for example, a similar process of involvement in politics by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Greece, the recent "Islamizing" of Turkey back towards the ancien regime, the crisis of democracy by confessionalism in Lebanon, the ultra-orthodox hold by the Jewish rabbinate in Israel, and the authoritive Sharia law in Egypt, Algeria and elsewhere, places Article 2 and the binding concordats in Malta in a far more better perspective. By carefully "Christianizng" the country and appointing its own ultra-conservative sympathizers, who share similar lifestyles, to important positions of power, the short lived secular ideals of the Republic have been corrupted and undermined.

Jessica Chetcuti •

David, isn’t this just human nature? Those people sitting in their ivory towers are enjoying the position that they’re in and certainly don’t want to rock the boat. There is no way in hell that they will jeopardise their position by going against their master, even if truth be known, they sometimes don’t agree with him, because basically they are all yes men at heart and know what side their bread is buttered. . Of course people in high positions naturally give of that air of respectability and by all accounts the “NO” camp does seem like a well oiled machine, but often enough their credibility has been lately undermined by coming out with some ridiculous reasons for not introducing divorce. To give an example someone said.... . If battered wives are granted the right to remarry, then so too will their abusive husbands. . In other words battered wives should keep their mouths shut and accept being battered I suppose..... How pathetic. There are many more such gems and the more that the “No” camp come out with them can only damage their credence. Yes they may sit in their high towering pinnacles with an air of superiority but they should be reminded that the higher they rise the further they fall..... we are definitely not so gullible. .

J Galea •

@CitizenX1 Extracting the bits and bobs from your comment, my conclusion is that you agree with the gist which is, of course, this: "A power network has successfully meshed Western capitalism and aggressive development with a blurring of the distinction between Church and State". Clearly, I'm not claiming that we're a carbon copy of Dubai. The Prime Minister, for starters, doesn't wear a turban. But I honestly feel that the analogy holds water rather tightly. Far more, at any rate, than analogies comparing us to Iran. Or those which claim we're some sort of melting pot of Italian and British values.

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The fact that you used a fictitious graphic when comparing us to Dubai says it all. At first I was worried that you might be showing a very common symptom in Malta - ignoring the truth and retreating into a fantasy world of delusion self engrandment - totally devoid from the reality of planet earth. So Dubai has lots of its own money, or at least UAE money. Malta on the other hand is a tax haven stealing money of others. Then there is the religious aspect. Malta's entanglement of state and religion gives it more in common with Arab countries than European ones. Replace the moon crescent with the cross - and you got yourself Malta. Also we are ruled by self-proclaimed hereditary elite who thing they have a god appointed right to rule us. This is also something else we have in common with Dubai. Both of us are not democracies. Back to why we are not Dubai. In Dubai foreigners need a local majority partner to do business. Here in Malta a foreigner can come in - compete with other Maltese businesses and get to pay only 5% tax while Maltese competitors pay 35%. This is discrimination based on nationalities and is immoral and illegal. A European in Malta is treated 7 times better than a Maltese citizen by the tax authorities, so that is what Cuc-Malti is worth in the eyes of PN == 1/7 of a foreigner! Off course the legal practices attached to various ministries get to profit tremendously from this discrimination. So here we are voting for lawyers and auditors who will them discriminate racially against us to further their own business practices. There are two MALTA - one for Maltese run by a religious Mullah and one for foreigners using us as a pirate base. I guess in the end - the analysis was good, but the title is misleading since it gives the impression that we have achieved something when in fact we have failed dismally as a country to live to the European credentials we aspired for.

joanne zarb •

This is such an interesting read. A fresh outlook on the situation is always welcome. However, I do believe that the reference to Afghanistan and Iran is usually directed at the ideological aspects of those countries, rather than the country as a whole. Unfortunately, we are also experiencing another negative aspect of what you refer to as aggressive development, which is currently happening in Dubai: over-development which ultimately proves unfeasible and unsustainable. Moreover, Malta lacks the economic prowess of Dubai which, to a certain extent, dampens this side-effect. Malta has very little to offer. All in all, I would say that Malta is somewhere between Afghanistan/Iran and Dubai, which, anyway, doesn't sound too good of a prospect.

A Dubai in the Mediterranean

A power network has successfully meshed Western capitalism and aggressive development with a blurring of the distinction between Church and State.