The war that became inevitable a month ago, when the French turned on Resolution 1441, started in the early hours of Thursday morning. There was not the bang that we had been expecting on the first night of the battle but a comparative whimper. The "awe and shock" came Friday night. Worth noting that had the end result of the initial whimper been successful, a particular missile homing in on grid references where a strong element of the Iraqi government and military leadership was believed to have gathered, would have brought the war to an end within 48 hours. This did not happen and the war continues.
Nothing in the beforemath was more bizarre than the head of the UN inspectors, Mr Blix, reading out a report to a Security Council in which the two main players were absent. Nothing except countries like France sending their representatives to the meeting to discuss progress on Iraqi disarmament and the rebuilding of the country. The latter activity is code for hanging on to the $40 billion oil deal currently on the Franco-Iraqi table.
France, it later emerged during an icy encounter in Brussels with Britain, would not fork out money for any reconstruction. That attitude should be easy to sort out once the war is over. Mr Bush may not be God, as a correspondent wittily pointed out in our newspaper columns, but Mr Chirac may soon be drinking from the cup of disloyalty. It will be some time before the EU, NATO and the UN rise above the ashes of French and others' recriminations.
Much has been made about the war and America's pursuit of oil as a war aim. In an article he filed with The Telegraph, last Tuesday, David Rennie pointed out that the United States already buys almost half a million barrels of oil a day from Iraq but, in fact, the whole of the Gulf nations account for a mere 11 per cent of America's daily consumption of nearly 20 million barrels of oil a day. There are analysts who have gone on record with the assertion that the US and the world can comfortably survive without Iraqi oil.
As American and British troops approached the start lines from which they were to invade Iraq, secure the oilfields in the south, swiftly descend on the outskirts of Baghdad and send forces further north to establish security over the oilfields of the north, most of the world was going through one of those surreal experiences difficult to explain.
Football matches continued to be played, preparations for the Oscar circus went on, the cricket world cup approached its final stages, the political parties in Malta kept up their election rallies, men and women went on with their daily lives and Robin Cook returned, with a great deal of dignity, to the back benches. The same cannot be said for Clare Short.
Harold Pinter, the man who gave us The Caretaker and The Birthday Party, among other elegant works, published a foul quatrain in The Spectator and reserved all rights for a dismal, unpoetic arrangement of words that are the common coinage of those who express themselves in terms of sexual organs and sexual encounters. There was nothing much to be reserved. God knows what Pilger was writing.
Mr Chirac was still chastising the Americans (but his spokesmen elsewhere were banging on about the UN taking over the reconstruction of Iraq once the war was over). The Queen, we were told, was praying for the safe return of her troops and I did likewise, for her troops, Mr Bush's and for those ordinary civilians and unwilling soldiers in Iraq whose only crime was to live under Saddam Hussein - and with no choice to do other than that.
What does he want?
The simple answer is that Dr Sant wishes to return to power. In order to gain that he must win the next general election. "Labour", he wrote in the newspaper with which he conducts a love-hate relationship, "organised its message" (during the referendum campaign) "in two stages - first, the effort to make people understand what partnership policies stood for and implied; then, a second effort, to focus on the general policies that would bring about Malta's economic and social recovery". Let's chew a little and then roll.
People understood as best they could what partnership policies, for want of a better word, were all about. On March 8 voters rejected them by 53.6 per cent in favour of membership of the European Union, 46.4 per cent against. To the delight of his stunned supporters and parliamentary colleagues, Dr Sant decided that voters had done nothing of the sort; 52 per cent were against membership of the EU, 48 per cent in favour. Nor did he make use of mirrors. This managed to insult more than 143,000 voters, raise the hopes of 124,000 Labour supporters and sow disapproval in the minds of those party members who had opted for the Yes vote.
Most people with something more than emptiness between their ears are still profoundly disturbed by this inversion of mathematics and the truth (Bertrand Russell sees the two as synonymous). Not only had Dr Sant failed to face the truth and accept the result of a democratic poll democratically conducted, he overturned it as though this were the most natural thing in the world to do. He attempted the impossible: he tried to ram defeat into the throat of victory. It was an astonishing performance. One must hope that the 19,000 Yes voters in excess of those who answered the referendum question negatively, will keep it in mind when they vote again on April 12.
The second part of Labour's message was "to focus on the general policies that would bring about Malta's economic and social recovery". If memory serves me right, the second thrust of Labour's message as developed by Dr Sant was to whip up a scaremongering campaign aided not a little by a bit of how's your uncle with the truth.
Membership, he insisted, would be bad for the self-employed, for pensioners, for huntin', shootin,' fishin' and farmin', for those who do not want to see abortion introduced, for employment, for the advancement of social policy, for education, for everything and everybody except "the big bosses" and, inevitably, friends of friends.
Membership was wrong for workers in more than a dozen factories and Malta's leading industrial firms, horrific for the environment, for education, whereas 'partnership', well, 'partnership' was the radiant future under a Labour government that would launch a Franciscan revolution of love and verity.
The radiant future
The weird ideA seems to be fermenting in Labour's mind that the answer to this referendum problem is for it to promise that if it were returned to power, another referendum would be held, this time answering the question whether voters preferred 'partnership' to membership.
Quite apart from the absurdity of the question, the electorate has already given its answer to a correctly formulated one. When it voted in favour of membership it automatically rejected 'partnership'. This is precisely why Dr Sant made his irresponsible decision in the counting hall and declared that the nays had it when the ayes gave the Nationalist Party its greatest victory over any political party in history. To call another referendum would be repetitious, tedious and at least tendentious. Dr Fenech Adami described the proposal as "another senseless gimmick".
As if all these antics were not enough, Dr Sant asked the Prime Minister to declare that he would respect the people's choice in the general election. Richness could not come wealthier. Dr Fenech Adami had no difficulty with making his declaration. Dr Sant, who has only recently refused to accept the choice of the electorate, continued to harbour a doubt. The next day he was reported as saying that notwithstanding the Prime Minister's declaration, Dr Fenech Adami was only paying lip-service to his declaration. He was not saying it from his heart! Spring has not invaded the soul of Dr Sant.
But the question that has to be asked is simple. Assume for a moment that Labour is returned and that another referendum is held. When? In 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007? Assume further that at the referendum being proposed the electorate once more gives its OK to the EU, what will Dr Sant do? Pipe us merrily into Brussels? If his past approach to Brussels is anything to go by, the notes must surely stick in his throat. Resign? Or perhaps, hold another election immediately after to see what the electorate really thinks? We are entering an Orwellian world.
Simpler by far is the fact that the electorate has made its decision over Europe. There is only one democratic way it can be overturned and that is at a referendum called by Dr Sant, if he were to walk up the steps of Castille, next month, and ask the electorate the same question. Honestly, Alfred, you will receive the same answer. (But see below)
Tricky
To write all that is, of course, to fall into Dr Sant's trap, one that Dr Fenech Adami and his party must steer clear of in the current election campaign. Its managers should be concentrating on the government's performance, its future intentions and the way these will synthesise within the parameters of the EU. The election manifesto must emphasise all three. I see glimmers of this happening and hope that these will be transformed into bright lights.
It should be held anathema by Government to allow the Opposition to steal its education clothes, or, worse, to maintain that the government has no education clothes on at all. It should be incontrovertible, and declared so, that for all the stick received and deserved as a result of the Mnajdra fall-out, strides have been made in creating a better immediate environment in various localities. True, this happened as a consequence of the creation of local councils, but it was this government that breathed new life into these institutions.
The environment will further improve with the public-private partnership undertaken to make flowers grow where none grew before. Witness the delightful carpet of violets near Spencer monument. Drive past the parade of olive trees stretching all the way from St Julian's to Balluta and beyond, the various gardens that have sprouted all over the place. Consider the vast amount of restoration work carried out in many parts of the island (not just Portes des Bombes, which was admittedly a triumphant piece of work), but on so many buildings and churches.
The government would be foolish if, for all the pot-holes that still exist, it does not claim kudos for a new approach to better road-building and road structures, traffic signs, traffic lights and where-is-this-road-going-to, how-far-is-it-to, blue signs? Mad if, on the hustings, it ignores the improvements in areas of government (no need to bang on about the inland revenue; we know to our cost it has become more efficient!), in the creation of e-government now in its post-embryonic stage, in hitching Malta into the world of information technology and financial services.
The government, in short, needs to blow its own trumpet. Where it is necessary to do so it should admit, without indulging in an unsightly exhibition of masochism, that it could have done better over the business of sprawl, scrawl and dust-bowls, about poor supervision, about its middle management, much of which is not competent. The campaign managers should be certain of one thing. The Opposition will be excoriating the government's effort in everything and even if, paradoxically, this may become counter-productive, it falls upon the Nationalist Party to come up with, and efficiently communicate, positive images and facts.
Appointment with destiny
April 16 falls on a Wednesday and everybody who is anybody will be in Athens. Twenty-five of these everybodies will be where one of the great world civilisations was born more than 2,500 years ago. Ten of them will be signing up to the Treaty of Membership of the European Union. One of those ten will be Malta by virtue of the referendum result. We have an appointment with destiny. Unless Dr Sant wins the election on April 12.
He has publicly said he will not be anywhere near the place on that date. Instead, he will be up to his neck in a course of negotiations that will climax in a 'partnership' agreement with the Union. The process, we are now being informed, could take up to a month; it will have to be conducted at a frenetic pace, one that his counterparts in Brussels will not contemplate. They will have had enough of Malta for the time being.
But that is the latest, this business of knocking up a partnership agreement in a month. The duration of negotiations changes with each passing day. Two, four, ten years ("cool, calm and relaxed"), then suddenly a vertiginous drop to 18 months (after the referendum, I think) and now a mere calendar month. And by the way, the First of May, 2004 will be out, too.
Incidentally, Romano Prodi seems to be the latest in a long line of victim suffering under the illusion that the referendum in Malta was won by the 54 percenters. Among the other deluded in Brussels were Messrs Blair and Chirac, if they will allow me to so conjoin them, Persson and Papandreou, Cox and Box I had almost written but settle for Cox and Simitis, Berlusconi and Schröder, Jean Claude Juncker. Dr Sant will have to perform sanctity status miracles to get a hearing with these people at some future date, say, 2008.
It would be all so sad if it were not so tragic. This little isle, this precious stone set in a wine-dark, tideless sea; with all its faults, this other-Eden demi-paradise. It deserves so much better.