We will fight them on the roundabouts…

Nothing like an international catastrophe to put a little perspective on things, is there? As I sat down to write this, the most prominent headline in local newspapers concerned the interrogation of two environmentalist activists for holding an unlicensed picnic on a roundabout.

A picnic on a roundabout. It seems to belong to the world of 1970s children’s TV… all that’s missing to complete the picture is Dougal the shaggy dog and Ermintrude the pink cow.

In any case: it was just the sort of thing I’d look forward to writing about. What sort of questions would the police have asked them, I wonder? “Who brought the sandwiches?” “Who left the tin-opener at home?” “Can anyone open this jar of honey? The lid is screwed on really tight….” 

But then the bombshell (literally): two explosions at Brussels airport, with news of a third at the metro just coming in now. Death toll is uncertain at this point, with latest indications suggesting around 20 dead and 130 injured. 

What is pretty clear, however, is that ‘picnic roundabout jokes’ no longer seem particularly funny. This kind of unexpected shock to the system has the effect of instantly trivialising such concerns (even though, to be fair, the arrest of peaceful protestors does carry human rights implications). More importantly, it also throws into sharp focus how bizarrely stunted our appreciation of global reality has really become.

It reminds me of ‘Carry on up the Khyber’: which had famous lampooned classic Victorian ‘stiff upper lip’, at a time when the Empire was crumbling all around them. We ourselves appear just like the diners in that movie’s most memorable scene: who insist on finishing their meal (complete with cigars) as if nothing were happening… even as bullets smashed through the windows, and parts of the ceiling collapsed onto the table.

Reading the local papers sometimes feels like sitting at that same dining room table. For a good few years now, Malta has been beset by encroaching war on practically all fronts… almost without even noticing.

In Libya to the south, it is warfare of the most literal variety imaginable. Sabratha, merely 260km away to the southeast, has in recent weeks been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting since the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011. Strangely, however, the ongoing hostilities – complete with US airstrikes from Sigonella in Sicily, which have no option but to fly over Malta’s airspace – have hardly caused a ripple in the local press.  More column inches were dedicated to the size of Beppe Fenech Adami’s swimming pool in Gharghur, or to Ira Losco’s Eurovision Song Contest entry, than to a war taking place literally on our doorstep.

And now, the attacks in Brussels seem to confirm predictions in the aftermath of the Paris attacks last year. It may not be ‘warfare’ in the conventional sense…  but there is definitely a war of sorts taking place in Europe: the same Europe we have been lulled into thinking of as unassailable, and of which we are a member state (therefore, potentially a target).

All of which makes following the local news kind of painful, really. Even as we were reminded of security risks at home and abroad, the top headlines in Malta still concerned another kind of ‘war’ altogether. The battle of Beppe Fenech Adami’s swimming pool, the siege of Konrad Mizzi’s offshore accounts, the destruction of Toni Abela… all form part of another ‘war’ that has been going on for decades. It is a war we have permitted to hog the media limelight for far too long, at the expense of other, much more serious issues. 

In so doing, it has also blinded us to our vulnerability as a small and mostly defenceless island, at a time when stability is rapidly fragmenting all around us.

To fully appreciate the untold horror of that vision, consider it this way. The same protagonists of Malta’s futile political war are also the same people (and institutions) we would depend on for national security in times of an emergency. In other words, people who have cut their teeth in a political system that relies almost exclusively on schoolyard name-calling… on casting wild aspersions and threatening with libel… of stamping their feet, and pointing fingers at each other as they bawl and cry… 

…these are the people whose decisions and actions will determine the country’s future (and present) safety.

Not the most encouraging of thoughts, I would say. But still: let’s look on the bright side. Futile or otherwise, the fact remains that both parties have been in a state of all-out annihilation warfare for the past… oh, 40 years at least. Surely, some of the experience would come in handy, when applied to warfare of other varieties.

What would happen, I wonder, if Malta reacted to a hypothetical terrorist attack in the same way as it responds to offensives/incursions of the political variety?

The roundabout picnic seems a good place to start. After all, it represents a minor skirmish in the much broader military campaign concerning ODZ development: an issue which is itself one of the major theatres of national combat. Our frontline foot soldiers, in this case, are the police: who this week decided to investigate the debatable ‘crime’ of a handful of demonstrators enjoying their packed lunches on a public roundabout.

Sticking only to the ODZ issue… aren’t their crimes of slightly greater import that should be investigated first? Shouldn’t the police be more concerned with actual illegal developments outside the development boundaries (which is what this issue is ultimately about)… than with the hatful of environmentalists who are ultimately only insisting on proper law enforcement?

Doesn’t look like it. No police action to halt any of a dozen (often massive) ODZ illegalities; instead, they come down hard on anyone who complains about the situation.

Makes you wonder how they’d cope with a terrorist attack. Consistency would naturally demand that they interrogate all the casualties, while ignoring the terrorists who actually committed the attack. Not a very promising start…

I’m afraid it only gets worse the more you look. The same police have not yet responded to calls by the Opposition (not that these were needed, but anyway) to investigate Konrad Mizzi’s energy contracts in the light of Panamagate. I am unaware of any investigation into Keith Schembri’s Kasco Ltd either… even after allegations concerning The Times and its paper purchase arrangements. 

And you can go back practically all the four decades of this war: it’s always been the same. In matters of ‘political controversy’, the police suddenly seem powerless to act. Even when they do act – as in the case of the 2013 oil scandal – they are often kept from making any headway by equally controversial ‘Presidential pardons’ that never seem to yield any results. 

Not to apportion all the blame to the police: there are clear cases where their hands are tied by the quality of the laws they have to enforce. One inevitable consequence of this ‘war’ was that all Malta’s legislation since Independence has been drawn up/amended by the same political parties doing all the fighting. That includes all the laws governing independent entities such as the Police Force (and also MEPA, the Broadcasting Authority, and many others). 

The results are as predictable and they are depressing. Institutions which serve to limit or circumscribe the powers of government have in nearly all cases been either stunted by insufficient or faulty legislation, or deliberately weakened and undermined. 

Parliamentary privilege, for instance, permits combatants to use weapons of mass destruction with impunity, without ever having to face any war crimes tribunal. Elsewhere, legislation that should hold both sides accountable remains missing in action. To date, the annual MPs’ declaration of assets remains a purely voluntary exercise… even though it was the undeclared assets of a Cabinet Minister that precipitated the current phase of the war.

And perhaps because the Maltese media (including myself, I freely admit) pay far more attention to this endless gladiatorial spectacle than it actually warrants… we haven’t paused to consider what all this means for the future safety of the country, if or when the shit ever does hit the fan.

For instance: are Malta’s health services capable of dealing with large-scale casualties in the event of a Brussels-style attack? Until recently, government and opposition were trading blows about the number of patients in corridors at Mater Dei – a result of overcrowding, even (so to speak) at the best of times. How can the same health system possibly cope with hundreds of people requiring medical assistance concurrently?

Coming back to the police: are they geared for the kind of criminal investigation that would be required under such circumstances? Leaving aside doubts raised by their handling of other crimes… do they even have the necessary manpower, intelligence (in the technical sense) and resources?

And is our army large enough to respond to a more concerted attack on Malta’s territorial sovereignty? That is debatable, given that it had to be beefed up by a ‘Detention Services’ corps (comprising mostly AFM personnel called in from retirement) to cope with overcrowding at detention services… at a time when the number of detainees was roughly 5,000.

The bottom line is: can we rely on Malta’s national security infrastructure at all in times of genuine crisis… given how much of that infrastructure has been either neglected or distorted beyond recognition, in the course of a decades-old (and increasingly irrelevant) political conflict?

My guess is no. That is why we evidently prefer to fight our battles on the roundabouts.