Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/739032
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 16 OCTOBER 2016 24 Opinion With a flip, and a flop, and a flippety-flop... A s someone who contributed directly to the media kerfuff le surrounding Caroline Muscat's decision to quit journalism and head the PN's electoral campaign... it may sound contradictory for me to say that the ensuing fuss was mostly a storm in a teacup. Still, in my defence I can add this: I am certainly not the only one to publicly contradict myself from one day to the next. The Nationalist Party itself (whose PR Caroline will shortly be handling) seems to be trying to set a whole new world record when it comes to political f lip-f lopping. Indeed, it has taken to contradicting itself so much of late, that journalists are starting to doubt whether to even bother reporting any PN statement at all... or just wait for the later, contradictory statement that will inevitably follow, and spare themselves the hassle of a printed retraction. For instance: over the last few months (but especially days), PN sources have repeatedly bombarded us with the message that the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk posed a risk comparable to '60 Hiroshimas'... and even (incredibly) to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of the 1980s, which left an area the size of half Europe uninhabitable to this very day. Yet just last Thursday, the same party's president (no less) suddenly turned around and assured us that "[she] never said LNG was dangerous". Hmm. Let's see how this claim actually stands up to reality, shall we? This is what Dr Anne Fenech wrote in an article in The Times dated August 7: "The very idea of having an LNG ship of those dimensions bang in the middle of a commercial harbour brimming with activity, without a protective breakwater, is frankly mad. That activity includes an oil storage facility, a Freeport which today welcomes the largest container carriers in the world, a substantial private fishing f leet, an aquaculture centre, bunkering facilities, the BWSC power station and the new power station itself, together with the resident popu¬lation of Birzebbugia and Marsaxlokk..." In case that wasn't unambiguous enough, Dr Fenech made it abundantly clear (in the same article) that she considers the primary danger associated with LNG to be the possibility of an explosion: "What if there is an ignition source such as in a collision, or any other incendiary – fireworks perhaps – then what? Then we will have a tragedy of disastrous proportions...." Funny, isn't it, how a tanker full of a gas that Anne Fenech 'never said was dangerous', could – according to the same Anne Fenech – also cause a 'tragedy of disastrous proportions'? Perhaps the definition of 'danger' has changed in the two months since she wrote that article. Or perhaps we have just witnessed a f lip-f lop of such colossal proportions, that to call it a 'f lip-f lop' would actually be unfair on the popular summer footwear of the same name. It's more like the mother of all wooden Swiss clogs. Try wearing a pair on your feet, and you'd probably sink through the tarmac... Yet it is but one small example of several. Consider PN leader Simon Busuttil 's miraculously changing opinion about the morning-after pill, for instance. On Wednesday, he told The Times that "this agreement [i.e., to restrict sale of MAP by prescription only] represents a finely balanced compromise that was carved out among all MPs present after lengthy debates and negotiations. As such, it is a compromise that deserves to be supported, and he [Busuttil] adds his support to it." This one is perhaps less immediately categorical, but the implications are nonetheless abundantly clear. After all, one only lends support to things one agrees with. Or at least, that's how it normally works out here in the real world. In politics, however, different rules apply. The following day – i.e., after his ill-judged comment rightly provoked outrage on the worldwide web – Busuttil predictably issued an equal but opposite statement. Like Anne Fenech before him, he denied ever saying what he had only just said. He doesn't disagree with over-the-counter availability of MAP. It's just that he threw his entire party's political weight behind the clean opposite decision, that's all... As for his own personal view on the issue, it is "that this is a decision for the Medicines Authority". Erm... sorry to interject, but: how can a decision taken by others possibly be described a 'personal view'? The question Dr Busuttil was asked was not 'who should take the decision?' It was: 'what do YOU personally think the decision should be?" Raphael Vassallo