Mistakes are human, but don't take us for a ride

Politicians are human and liable to make mistakes. But when a mistake is made and the same politician is self-humiliated, why should that politician dare pull a chord and blame it on the media who, by right, are there to x-ray his policies, which after all have a serious implication on the future of this country?

Alfred Sant's attempt to speak in French to EU Commissioner Pascal Lamy rather than in English was a decision taken in bad taste. It was obvious that Dr Sant, a confirmed Francophile, wanted to repair the damage he inflicted on himself just a few days earlier when he stopped Department of Information officials from ushering journalists out of his meeting with European Parliament president Pat Cox.

As a journalist myself, I expected the worst and it happened. That day my colleagues and I were witnesses to a political showdown.

As usual, Dr Sant kept insisting that his policies of 'virgin neutrality' and 'Switzerland in the Mediterranean' for Malta were realistic, while Cox was desperately trying to understand if it was he himself who needed to rethink the reality that the world has changed and yesterday's enemies are today's allies.

I was there and I know what Pat Cox told Alfred Sant and he cannot deny it. After all, it was Dr Sant's choice to let the media in.

Dr Sant knew he made a big mistake and once he set the precedent, he tried to repair it. But how?

When the time came for Dr Sant to meet Pascal Lamy, the media were ready for a Pat Cox part two. And so it was. It was very difficult for Dr Sant to make a U-turn now and if he were to keep the press out, he would have surely been thought of as not being quite open.

So with the media in front of him and Commissioner Lamy at the other end of the table, Dr Sant set the ball rolling by speaking in French.

M. Lamy, a Frenchman and fellow Socialist replied 'Why not?' and the conversation carried on in French.

However, do you need to be a Harvard graduate to be able to understand or speak French?

Definitely not, and Alfred Sant erred grossly here by assuming the media in Malta were as incompetent as the author of a contribution in Labour's internet daily maltatoday.com who wrote that the journalists present didn't know French.

How dare they? Is it possible that Sant and the Malta Labour Party believe that the Maltese are so daft in contrast to them?

Does the Malta Labour Party know that to know French is not a privilege but a must in today's world, and that hundreds of Maltese, competent or not, know, write and speak French together with an array of other foreign languages?

And as for the media, what does the MLP think we are, when after the meeting with Commissioner Lamy it issued a press statement attempting to say the complete opposite of what was discussed.

The statement said "the meeting confirmed that Labour's policy for Switzerland in the Mediterranean is the right one for Malta" almost giving the impression that Commissioner Lamy agreed to this and approved it.

In less than 24 hours from the release of the statement, Pascal Lamy felt it necessary to clarify the matter and tore apart the theory of Malta as Switzerland in the Mediterranean.

Lamy accepted to be interviewed by television and newspapers on Saturday and stated that what Sant was proposing did not exist and could not be given to Malta.

"I can't think of something which can give you big rights and at the same time give you little obligations", Lamy stressed.