Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1512265
12 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 29 NOVEMBER 2023 AS anyone with any experience in TEFL will surely confirm: English can be an in- furiating language, at times. Take the expression in the headline, for instance. As a small child, I was positive- ly flummoxed to hear fully-grown adults (who 'should really have known better') utter such astonishingly daft inanities, as: 'You can't have your cake, and eat it…' Surely, that should be the other way around: it is, after all, impossible to 'eat a slice of cake'… unless you actually HAVE one, in your possession. (Just ask Queen Marie-Antoinette of France; she'll tell you all about it…) But, well, you know how these things eventually go. It was around 20 years later that I finally discovered that the verb 'to have' had changed meaning a little, since that expression was first coined. Once upon a time, it also meant… 'to KEEP'. Armed with this new lexicographical in- sight, everything suddenly made perfect sense. No, of course you can't 'eat your cake'… and continue 'having it in your possession, afterwards' (DUH!) And yet, and yet… the expression con- tinues to infuriate me, all the same. Let's face it: the contruction still remains a lit- tle 'back-to-front', wouldn't you say? Up- dated to Modern English, the same senti- ment would be better expressed by… well, any variation of what I just wrote, above (E.g., 'You can't keep your cake, after hav- ing already eaten it'). Another problem, however, is that… well, let's just say that (20+ years later, this time) I'm suddenly having the same old doubts, again. Is it really all that very 'impossible', to retain possession of 'something' – including, but not limited to, a 'slice of cake' – even AFTER having duly 'eaten it' (leaving not a single crumb behind?) Suddenly, I'm not so sure. Just look at Roberta Metsola, for example (admit it: didn't see THAT one coming…) She seems perfectly capable of performing this otherwise 'impossible' feat, over and over again… and with the greatest of ease, too! Only not with 'cake', of course. (That wouldn't do at all, would it? Not at a time when cinemas are showing Ridley Scott's 'Napoleon' – featuring a close-up of Marie-Antoinette's DECAPITATION – across the entire EU…) No: in Metsola's case, the expression would have to be modified slightly. Some- thing like: "You CAN keep your pro-life credentials; even after having (quite liter- ally) signed them away, as part of a bar- gain to become President of the European Parliament…' There, much better (even if I say so myself)! Because while it may still sound every bit as 'contradictory' – and there- fore, 'impossible' - as 'devouring a nev- er-ending slice of cake'… it looks to me as though Roberta Metsola HAS, in fact, succeeded in doing precisely that, over the course of the past two years. Let's go over it again, shall we? In January 2022 (on the eve of her elec- tion as EP president) Roberta Metsola emerged from a meeting with French PM Macron, to publicly declare – and we all heard her - that she would sign a declara- tion called the 'Simone Veil Pact'. Now: just to be clear what this actual- ly entails, from a policy point of view… a newspaper called 'The European Con- servative' (no prizes for guessing where it stands, on abortion) later reported that: "The day after her election, [Metsola] was keen to demonstrate her commit- ment to supporting women's access to contraceptives and abortion in the Euro- pean Union. [She] signed a pact - named after Simone Veil, the French politician who made abortion legal in France in 1975 - intended to guarantee women in Europe 'human dignity and human rights,' including safe and easy access to abortion." In so doing, Metsola committed herself – as newly-elected President of the Eu- ropean Parliament, please note – to both recognise 'easy access to abortion' as a human right; and also, to at least TRY and enshrine it in the European Charter of Human Rights, where (according to the Simone Veil pact, anyway) it should really belong. And… fair enough, I suppose. For in all honesty: Roberta Metsola's sudden U-turn may well have 'disconcerted' – to put it mildly - some of the European conserv- atives who actually voted for her, in the EP election… and who, not unreasonably, will surely have expected the very oppo- site: given that Metsola had actually cam- paigned on the 'pro-life' ticket, for years beforehand. (Sorry, but it had to be said.) Be that as it may, however: as far as I'm concerned, Roberta Metsola still remains fully entitled – according to the same Eu- ropean Charter of Human Rights, by the way - to simply 'revise her own political opinions', at will (on any topic she choos- es; but especially, I should think, on what is after all a rather complex issue, that ulti- mately concerns women's health.) So had the matter stopped there, I prob- ably wouldn't even be writing this article at all. The only trouble, however, is that… it didn't 'stop there', did it? (Indeed, you could almost argue that it never even 'started', to begin with). Just yesterday, for instance, the same Roberta Metsola was nominated as one of the '28 most powerful leaders in Europe', by Politico… and this is how the event was reported in the press: "Explaining the reason behind her selec- tion, Politico says Metsola took control of the European Parliament at a difficult moment: a month before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and just Looks like you CAN 'have your cake and eat it', after all… Raphael Vassallo Roberta Metsola