Damp squib

There is an obvious lack of passion, if not interest, in the Nationalist Party leadership contest unfolding at present

There are just too many kettles calling the pots black. This is in stark contrast to the governing Labour Party’s relatively recent leadership election which had two proven and inspiring contenders, certainly the fruit of the Party’s long-established, efficient candidate-selection machine which is, remarkably, still producing new party protagonists at local and national levels.

The choice facing disgruntled Nationalist Party members at this moment in time is not exactly a tantalising one. Caught as they are with less than two years from a general election, I am sure they would have preferred to stake the great old Party’s future in a less volatile environment in which you have two contenders representing two obvious factions (within various other subplots that had for some time included ex-PN rebel Franco Debono, certainly a rising favourite among PN grassroots) that have not been able to see eye to eye on practically anything since the PN debacle in the 2017 general election.

The damp squib character of this PN leadership contest excels in its very own awkwardness. You have the current leader, the democratic choice of a very strong majority of PN members, being asked to confirm his entitlement for the third time after having been literally dragged in metaphorical and not-sometaphorical chains across the political field by the frustrated representatives of an establishment vanguard that had, after all, cost the Party’s trust among the electorate in 2008, 2013 and 2017 general elections. Holding on to their filial tentacles within the Party, they just could not accept that an outsider like Adrian Delia could glide into the Party on the sturdy wings of grassroot support to affect the changes that everyone had acknowledged as necessary for renewal.

The chief accusation facing Delia in this contest is that he had been unable to bring about the changes he had promised. His “New Way” had become old almost overnight, but evidently through no complete fault of his. It is difficult skippering a boat in which the rowers are paddling in motley directions, more so if they start ganging up on the captain and chartering their own routes to unclear destinations.

His opponent, Bernard Grech, chosen by the mutinous crew as some kind of unknown messiah in the midst of an inter-faction battle which had its other

papabilis being thrown overboard at the mere spin of a new name and a new face, or quietly asked to withdraw from possible kingship. One particular contender had it within her grasp but for a predictable Presidential intervention. What is at times amusing is Grech’s continued appeal for “unity” when he is the very offspring of disunity within a Party that has, for years now, been forcibly made to forfeit its role as a serious and credible Opposition.

At political moments like these, I always find myself referring to a beautiful and highly witty poem by the great English Victorian poet, Robert Browning, The Pope and the Net. Here you have a Popewannabee, son of a fisher father, seeking to win the support of his fellow cardinals during a Conclave at the Vatican. His choice of a fisherman’s net as his coat-of-arms led to some elitist hilarity, but most of his peers thought he was the right man for the job – humble and holy... but then:

So, Pope he was: and when we flocked, its sacred slipper on,

The damp squib character of this PN leadership contest excels in its very own awkwardness. You have the current leader, the democratic choice of a very strong majority of PN members, being asked to confirm his entitlement for the third time after having been literally dragged in metaphorical and not-so-metaphorical chains across the political field by the frustrated representatives of an establishment vanguard that had, after all, cost the Party’s trust among the electorate in 2008, 2013 and 2017 general elections.

To kiss his foot, we lifted eyes, alack, the thing was gone,

That guarantee of lowlihead, − eclipsed that star which shone!

Each eyed his fellow, one and all kept silence. I cried, “Pish!

I’ll make me spokesman for the rest, express the common wish

Why, Father, is the net removed?” “Son, it hath caught the fish.”

To laugh and to cry…

Beleaguered as the EU’s southern Mediterranean states are from illegal immigration, audacious human trafficking and suspicious NGO collaboration, you have to laugh at the media frenzy and official panic in the UK following the recent spate of channelcrossings by desperate immigrants, most of them probably seeking to reunite with family and relatives.

While this is a peak-summer occurrence in the dangerous waters of the English Channel, for us in the central Mediterranean it is a wholeyear phenomenon. Here the inclement weather and the angry seas of winter still provide the perfect ambience for urgent satellite calls and other electronic means on the part of NGOs from other EU countries where immigration is the issue to ignore or to wantonly overlook. To say Italy, Malta, Spain, Cyprus and Greece are brimming with immigrants and reception centres there are bursting at the seams (rendered even worse by the harsh realities of the current pandemic) is an understatement.

If we then had to look at the UK’s immigration tantrums from a Maltese perspective, from the angle of this minuscule island with a big heart, it becomes sadly hilarious. Kent County Council alone, for example, which covers an area of multiple Maltas, came out yapping it cannot safely look after more child refugees unless other local authorities step in to help. This after 400 asylumseeking children have made it to the Kent coast so far this year. Goodness gracious me.

Like Malta has been doing with a large number of fellow EU member states and the Brussels royals, constantly appealing for solidarity, the Kent coucil has been asking other local authorities across the UK to take in the children and to relieve it of the “impossible strain” that “has been placed on its finite social care resources”.

The similarity in both appeals is striking. One Kent official was quoted as saying “this is a huge challenge for Kent, but a relatively small challenge to solve nationally, and should have been resolved before now”. The difference, of course, is in arrival numbers, physical sizes and equations. Were the rest of the EU member states, or the majority of them, to stop from shirking their responsibilities, illegal immigration and the process of repatriation in the case of manifold undeserving applications would be quicker and certainly more effective in stemming the tide.

The saddest spectacle that occurred during this AngloFrench bickering match and media fury over the recent summer crossings was that of a 16-year-old Sudanese boy immigrant found dead on a Calais beach. The story suddenly had to become human, shedding its statistical and financial shell. From you have to laugh... to you have to cry.