Marlene, Helena and Joe

CLARIFICATION: It is made clear that Minister Helena Dalli did condemn Joe Debono Grech's statement in parliament.

Over the last two weeks the media dedicated a lot of time and space to the incident involving Marlene Farrugia, MP who resigned from the Labour Party Parliamnetary group, and Joe Debono Grech, MP, a Labour stalwart, and the subsequent reaction of Minister Helena Dalli.

This might just mean that there were not enough interesting events going on after the royal visit, CHOGM and what not... and an incident that should have been considered closed was reopened and redissected with a very interesting – but unfair – spin.

Marlene decided to resign from the Labour Party and there was a reaction from her erstwhile colleagues. Joe Debono Grech, well known for his mercurial style, verbally threatened her with physical violence: nifqghek is the word he used, a word not unheard of in the Birkirkara slums. 

Comparing this incident with the incidents in the House of Reprentatives (and on the way to it) in the seventies and early eighties under the Mintoff adminsitrations, I would be tempted to conclude that this was much ado about nothing. But then, what used to happen then is the wrong yardstick for the House of Representatives today.

Whether Joe meant what he said literally or whether he was just using an expression, is hardly a moot point. The upshot was that his words provoked a complaint from the Opposition whip insisting that such a threat was a breach of the rules and the Speaker had to make a ruling about the matter.

The Speaker correctly found out that both Marlene and Joe were trading insults and he somehow extracted some sort of apology from both sides, a development that led to his declaring that the incident was closed.

The Opposition did not agree with this ruling, arguing that the aggressor and the victim were treated on an equal footing – but that is another matter.

Marlene Farrugia was in no mood to acquiesce and claimed that Minister Helena Dalli could not launch a campaign against domestic violence without condemning the foul mouth of Joe Debono Grech. She did in fact condemn it. This was the beginning of an incredible spin that is so common in politics all over the world: interpreting wrongly one’s poltical foe and accusing him or her – and anyone who does not agree with this interpretation – of defending the original wrongdoing.

Helena Dalli argued that the incident could not be compared with domestic violence just because Joe is a man and Marlene is a woman. She argued that sexual abuse of women and domestic violence were never part of the equation in the incident.

She is right, of course; even though she put her foot in it in more ways than one, more so considering that she did not condemn Debono Grech’s behaviour outright – irrespective of the spin that reintepreted his motives.

I have seen Debono Grech erupt in Parliament and elsewhere so many times that I have no reason to believe that there were any intended sexual undertones in his threat. The expression he used is just an uncouth threat that is uttered normally in some street brawl. The intention is undoubtedly sexually neutral and Debono Grech would have used it just the same if it was a male MP resigning from the Labour Parliamentary group. This does not mean that I condone his verbal abuse and that I do not condemn it. Yet, I do not buy the spin that he was threatening Marlene Farrugia with sexual abuse just because he is a man and she is a woman.

The media guns were cleverly turned against Helena Dalli since most media swallowed the bait about Debono Grech’s intentions, hook line and sinker. The incident was blown up and Dalli was depicted as refusing to condemn Debono Grech’s abusive action just because she refused to accept the spin that the incident had sexual undertones. The incident was likened to a case of domestic violence while she was launching a campaign against this sort of abuse. Hence accusations of hypocrisy and calls for Helena Dalli’s resignation became the logical effects of the spin. 

Helena Dalli stood her ground. Which means that the spin against her will haunt her for the rest of her poltical career. She should expect the spinned allegation to reappear every time she says something, irrespective of the context in which she is speaking.

I know what I am saying. Once, as minister, I responded to a question about my being arrogant by not only denying such behaviour but also by showing a letter I received from one person written in a way that showed that there were some quite arrogant citizens out there. This was spinned and reinterpreted to mean that I considered all citizens to be arrogant – a spin that lived with me so long as I was minister.

Helena should expect this sort of treatment. Bad luck.

Who rather than what

Most people in Malta intrepret others according to who they are – ‘ad hominem’, as the Latin phrase goes – rather than attempting to consider what one says on its own merits. I am finding this fact quite a depressing thing.

Recently Ramona Frendo, with whom I share every Sunday morning ‘explaining’ what the papers are saying on PBS and TVM, cheekily remarked that the people from the south are the more intelligent.

I had no doubt that she was being sarcastic as in real life she does not make such distinctions. Many missed the sarcasm completely and complained bitterly about what she said. They did so because of their own bias about people coming from the south, especially Labour-leaning ones, and could not realise that she was poking fun at such ridiculous biases rather than being biased herself.

This is not just a one-off incident. Read the comments in the various blogs and news portals and, sure enough, most of the comments are about the person making the original statement while ignoring completely whatever this person has written.

In other words, most of my compatriots refuse to make an effort to look at things as they are, at face value, and prefer to interpret things according to what they know, or think they know, about who said what rather than according to what was said.

With a good dose of polical bias, of course.