Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1120087
10 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 22 MAY 2019 BUT before turning to what must go down as the spec- tacular campaign train-wreck in Maltese electoral history… a word about the murder of Lassana Cisse Souleymane. I have decided not to com- ment on the arrest of those two AFM soldiers – and all the associated implications - for the time being. This is partly because the experience of the last few years alone has taught me to be cautious be- fore wading headlong into such matters; but partly also because, as usual, the incident has already been drowned by a deluge of wildly speculative claims. All I'll say for now – though I'll come back to this in the near future – is that Maltese politicians have to be ultra- cautious in how they respond to events such as this. Jo- seph Muscat gave a very fine, statesmanlike speech at Sun- day's Labour conference… but some of us might remem- ber how sharply it contrasted with another speech he made, before another election, just a few years back. Naturally, the U-turn is very welcome: but let's face it. It wasn't that long ago that the same Joseph Muscat was threatening 'pushbacks' - i.e., forced repatriation of asylum-seekers at sea, before their asylum request was even heard (still less processed and rejected) - from the exact same podium. Likewise, Adrian Delia's call for 'political responsibility' to be shouldered – uttered with former Home Affairs Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici sitting right behind him – must have rankled in the ears of all those who recently drove past PN billboards complaining about how Malta has become 'lit- tered with foreigners'. Some might be itching to re- mind Delia of his own party's responsibilities in this regard. It was, after all, past Nation- alist administrations – with their detention policies, their mass-deportations, their hab- it of ghettoising entire parts of the country, with no fore- thought whatsoever to the long-term consequences, etc. – that created the ideal con- ditions for racial hatred to flourish in this country. (And if my memory serves me cor- rectly, it was on Mifsud Bon- nici's watch that another Afri- can man – Mamadou Kamara, from Mali - died violently in the back of a Detention Ser- vices van, parked outside the Paola health centre on the night of June 29, 2012. My, how quickly we forget…) Lastly, President George Vel- la might want to have a word with his speech-writers – if he even has any – for paint- ing him out as more immedi- ately concerned with covering up for the Armed Forces of Malta, than with the murder itself. 'Does not reflect on a disciplined corps', my eye. The fact that one of those suspects was retained in the AFM - despite previous crimi- nal convictions, and an entire history of public, on-line rac- ist hate-speech – points pre- cisely towards a collapse in army discipline. Having said that, I do agree that this crime should not be held up as an automatic in- dictment of all the AFM's per- sonnel. I know from first-hand ex- perience that some of them are, in fact, the very antithesis of racist hatemongers… the sort who – far from murder- ing a man in cold blood, just because of the colour of skin - would be the first to risk their own lives to save others: regardless of race, colour, or creed. But to suggest that a brutal, execution-style racist murder, for which two AFM soldiers have already been charged, bears no implications what- soever for the AFM's chain of command… that's just patent- ly ridiculous. OK, now… like Michael Stipes before me… 'I've said too much'. At least, for the time being. Moving onto other matters. As I may have had occasion to remark before… man, I've seen some pretty weird and wacky stuff in my time, you know. Even I, however, shall have to concede that this latest campaign twist defies any- thing I have previously expe- rienced, or even imagined. In fact, I'll still trying to work out what the hell it was that just happened. Let's try and unravel it, shall we? On Monday, the Times re- ported that the Nationalist Party and the Partit Demokra- tiku had both signed up to a pledge – originated by the rightwing group 'Moviment Pattrijotti Maltin', please note: the same guys who or- ganize public 'majjalati', to demonstrate how 'non-Mus- lim' they are – to entrench Malta's abortion ban in the Constitution. Those of us who have been around will recognize this as a copy-and-paste of Tonio Borg's ill-fated 2005 strategy. Then as now, it was very obvi- ously a trap designed to force smaller parties into a corner over that one dreaded issue… abortion. Only this time, it came from one of the looniest of Malta's fringe parties, in- stead of directly from the PN itself. No surprises, of course, that the PN would fall over itself in its haste to sign up… the PN having a long history of weap- onizing this issue to kill both the discussion, and also their political opponents: one, by bloody one. But I was a little surprised to see how easily and naively the PD – supposedly Malta's only 'liberal' party, affiliated with the ALDE (for how much longer, remains to be seen) – walked straight into the trap. That, by the way, was before the inevitable (and woefully predictable) backlash even kicked in. For fairly obvious reasons, liberal voters who support re- cent calls for (at minimum) a healthy debate on the issue, were gobsmacked to see 'their' party aligning itself with such a radical, fundamentalist ini- tiative. For, at the risk of repeat- ing all the arguments of 2005 (where was Godfrey Farrugia back then, by the way?)… this is not just about 'abortion'. This is a naked, undisguised bid to stifle all future discus- sion on the topic, by placing it beyond the reach of any meaningful legislative change. As such, it is the very oppo- site of 'liberalism' – it is a coer- cive drive to exploit a massive (and mostly emotive) opposi- tion to one issue, in order to inculcate only one viewpoint at the cost of all others. As a liberal voter, I would cut off my hand before ever using it to elect any candidate who was illiberal enough to support that initiative. PD chairman Godfrey Far- rugia is no stranger to politics, and all it entails… so I imagine he was perfectly aware that, by signing that document, he was also signing away most (if not all) of his party's liberal sup- porters, in one fell swoop. And this is the part I don't get. That he would do so him- self – exclusively as an indi- vidual, independent candidate – might even make sense (if, that is, he wasn't also repre- senting the European liberals and democrats in this elec- tion). But that he would commit his entire party to that pledge, in writing… only for around half its candidates to public dissociate themselves from it, within the space of literally a few hours… no, I don't get that at all. Given that one of his stern- est critics was Marlene Farru- gia, no less: the founder of PD, and also… well, I don't like bringing personal relation- ships into it, but I'm afraid it has to be done, under the cir- cumstances. What, are we to understand that Godfrey Farrugia didn't even inform his own partner, before taking such a giant leap in the dark? Was signing that pledge a 'surprise' he decided to just spring onto his own party… just like that, out of nowhere, five days before an election? I can only surmise that that is what, in fact, happened. How else can we explain that Mar- lene Farrugia would "distance [herself] from the extrem- ists and fundamentalists who came up with this senseless pledge which has nothing to do with regard for human life but has everything to do with subordination of females, and with the gross insensitivity and judgemental attitude for the plight of women," etc? Or that Timothy Alden – the PD's deputy leader (and, therefore, Godfrey's right- hand man) would illustrate his reaction with a picture of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the Starship Enterprise, doing a classic 'facepalm'? Or that two PD candidates – Camille Applegren and Mat- thew Mizzi - would immedi- ately dissociate themselves from their party leader (Ap- plegren would even go on to withdraw from Facebook alto- gether, in the last week of the campaign)? On that note, I still can't un- derstand why it ended up be- ing Camilla Appelgren to walk the plank… and not Godfrey Farrugia, who committed this giant blunder in the first place. But that's just an aside. Above all: how can we rec- oncile Godfrey Farrugia's (apparently individual) ini- tiative, with the manifesto of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe… which the PD has also separately en- dorsed, despite the fact that it very clearly, and very unam- biguously, upholds the right of women to access safe abor- tions in their own country? But if you ask me, the single most bizarre aspect of it all is that… well, Timothy Al- den sums it up quite neatly, in that 'facepalm' post of his: "The party leaders have either signed or not signed a pledge relating to the right to life in the constitution. It is, by de- sign, meant to split people apart, to be neatly categorised into one camp or another. By design, EACH political par- ty was going to be wounded by it. That is because EACH mainstream political party in Malta contains both conserv- atives and liberals…" Alden, it seems, was all along capable of seeing that which proved invisible to his older (and vastly more experienced) party leader. Yet all the same, the PD - like AD before it – allowed itself to be eviscerated by the same old political ploy. How many other small parties and grass- roots movements are going to be simply swept away in fu- ture – to the benefit of the tra- ditional political duopoly, and the detriment of public debate in Malta – before we all real- ise that this is ultimately what this abortion hullaballoo is all about? It cannot be that there is not a single Maltese political par- ty out there – not even on the loony fringe – that is capable of resisting this trap. It cannot be that Malta's entire politi- cal class is just too goddamn terrified of this great big 'ba- baw' – this mere word, whose very utterance seems to cause them all to instantly dive for cover - to be able to stand up to a classic case of political bullying. I suppose, with only four days to go before a European election, it's a little too late to do anything about it now. The PD is going to have to somehow limp and hobble its way through the last days of this campaign… with its best candidates 'missing in action', and dragging its wounded, shell-shocked leader behind it as it goes. But after this election? That's a whole different ballgame… Raphael Vassallo How to abort a political party, five days before an election