Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1174220
THERE is an Internet 'meme' – if that is even the right word for the culture of posting im- ages with 'motivational' (or political, or satirical, etc.) mes- sages – that for some reason keeps drifting into my online field of vision. You may have seen it before: it shows a typical job interview, seen from the interviewee's perspective, with speech bub- bles to indicate the following dialogue: Q: What is your greatest weakness? A: Honesty. Q: I don't think honesty is a weakness… A: I don't give a shit what you think... Now: if there were such a thing as a searchable index of online memes – and, the Internet being what it is, there probably is – this one would most likely be filed under the 'Just imagine!' category. As in: 'Just imagine' someone were to really say that in a real job interview…' Or maybe the 'As if' section (note: in the purely 'Malglish' use of the phrase). In the sense that… … 'As if' something like that would ever happen in real life… 'as if' anyone at all, in the entire history of job-interview situations, has ever given a sin- gle honest answer to that same question… And this, naturally, is what makes that meme so memora- ble. On one level, it is beauti- fully ironic that the inter- viewee was asked for an honest answer… in a situation where 'honesty' was actually the last thing the interviewers expected to hear. But on another: while the dialogue itself is the stuff of pure fantasy (another category might have been, 'Things we've all wished we'd said or done, but never had the balls to')… the situation it depicts is very real: to the extent that there are even websites offering practical advice on how to answer that, and other typical job-interview questions. Evidently, then – after all these years of only ever receiv- ing bald, barefaced lies to their faces – job interviewers still ask that same old idiotic question, every single time. Makes you wonder what sort of answers they'd really expect: 'My greatest weakness? Not sure if it counts… but I have this habit of picking my nose, and flicking the snot to see if it sticks to my computer moni- tor…' (Note: I knew someone who had this weakness once; and for some obscure reason, he never managed to keep a job for more than a week…) No, indeed. Real answers would probably sound more like the one given by Spud in that classic job interview scene from 'Trainspotting': "Weak- nesses? Me? Nah… oh wait, yeah… maybe I do have one weakness… I'm a perfection- ist…:" Again, there is some truth to this. Those guidebooks I mentioned earlier all offer the same advice: choose a 'weak- ness' that can just as easily be interpreted as a 'strength'. If I know this, and you know this… and even Spud from 'Trainspotting' knew it, more than 20 years ago… well, every job interviewer who has ever existed will surely know it much better than anyone. Yet they keep asking all the same…. which leads me to be- lieve that they either get some kind of kick about being lied to; or else, they are more inter- ested in the creativity of the fabrications they are told – and what it may reveal about the teller's competence and per- sonality – than in 'the truth'. Well, I got more or less the same impression watching He- lena Dalli's 'job interview' be- fore the European Parliament last week… and not just hers, mind you. Karmenu Vella, John Dalli, Tonio Borg – espe- cially Tonio Borg – as well as Joe Borg before him… they all found themselves in exactly the same situation: i.e., having to give MEPs the sort of answers they knew they wanted to hear, instead of what they actually think or believe themselves. For instance: Helena Dalli was asked point blank whether she agreed with her government's handling of the Konrad Mizzi/ Panamagate issue. She replied: 'No, I don't agree, I would have done things totally different.' Hmmm. It's a pity there wasn't any follow-up ques- tion to that, because a couple of rather obvious ones spring to mind. Like, for instance: if Helena Dalli could go back in time, and rectify her past mistakes… how, exactly, would she 'do things different'? By voting against her own govern- ment's motion of confidence in Konrad Mizzi, perhaps (instead of in favour… as, in fact, she did in 2016)? But this only raises an even more obvious question. If – with hindsight – she 'disagreed' with Muscat's handling of the Panama Papers… why did she vote the way she did, anyway? Why stick up for Konrad Mizzi in that vote, instead of seizing the opportunity to get rid of him through a Parliamentary resolution (in the same way as Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had 'got rid of' Richard Cachia Caruana, just a few years earlier)? Why, in brief, does Helena Dalli only say she would have 'done things different' now… and even then, only when there's the small matter of a career advancement attached to the question… when it was only three years ago that her own actions completely belied her assertion in that (oh, so very brief) reply? Oh well… you don't really expect an answer from me, do you? I would imagine it's for the same reason Tonio Borg suddenly found himself con- tradicting all his own former policies, when quizzed by the same European Parliament on the dreaded subject of 'female reproductive health'. Remember? As Justice Min- ister under Lawrence Gonzi in 2005, Tonio Borg had led a furious cavalry charge in favour of a proposed Constitutional amendment that would have prevented even future gen- erations from ever changing Malta's 'female reproductive rights' situation: which basi- cally amounts to a total ban on abortion under all cir- cumstances… by far the most restrictive and primitive legal regime anywhere in Europe. As an applicant for a top job in Brussels, however, the same Tonio Borg nonchalantly informed his job interviewers that he 'fully respected' the EU's position in favour of safe access to abortion in all coun- tries… and that, as EU Com- missioner for Health (no less), he would work to implement all the relevant treaties and conventions… including all the ones that condemn countries that have total abortion bans, and which recommend legal changes to ensure safe access to abortion for all women, everywhere. And to be fair, he wasn't exactly lying, either. It is true that, for his full term as Health Commissioner, Tonio Borg oversaw the implementation of numerous EU directives and programmes aimed at funding safe abortions all over the de- veloping world… after having spent over a decade champi- oning the most extreme facet of the local (but ONLY local) pro-life cause. I need hardly add that all other Maltese commissioners- designate were also grilled about the same topic… that's what happens, I suppose, when your country clings to archaic, medieval legislation regulat- ing an issue the EU feels very strongly about – and in all cases, their reply stood in gar- gantuan conflict with their own political record in that same department. In 2005, Joe Borg – who, as Foreign Minister, had helped negotiate the famous 'abortion protocol' in Malta's accession treaty – likewise found himself mumbling something incoher- ent about Malta having ratified 'the Cairo Declaration' in 1994 (which, once again, advo- cates safe access to abortion in all countries)… conveni- ently omitting the small detail 24 OPINION maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 OCTOBER 2019 Raphael Vassallo Strange things happen to people in job interviews... If Helena Dalli could go back in time, and rectify her past mistakes… how, exactly, would she 'do things different'?