Common indecency

The decent thing to do often turns into indecency by not being squared up to. The indecent thing to avoid is sometimes taken up with grim determination. Recent and ongoing events in Italy and the UK starkly illustrate the two circumstances, suggesting interesting juxtapositions with similar events in Malta.

Our neighbour to the north suffered the ignominy of the Berlusconi blight to the bitter end of his latest political cycle. The media tycoon, who remained just that while being Prime Minister, sullied the image of Italy with his antics to recover ground lost to Romano Prodi, to the resonating clash of broken promises and weak economic performance. Having lost by a thin margin, he refused to do the decent thing, accept the outcome with grace, concede and congratulate his victor.

Silvio Berlusconi then proceeded to outdo his own indecency. He feigned horror at the proposal that Massimo D'Alema, an erstwhile balanced communist and Prime Minister, and currently the hugely respected leader of the largest grouping within the winning Prodi coalition, should succeed Carlo Azeglio Ciampi as President of the Republic.

Mr Berlusconi roared that the prospect was indecent, no less, Mr D'Alema being an active politician, etc, etc. Yet, it was an open secret that the tycoon had ogled the Presidency, and might well have landed that safe haven had his coalition pipped the Prodi kaleidoscope to the coveted post, and retained office.

Eventually Senator Giorgio Napolitano, another old communist was elected, over Mr Berlusconi's trampled political body. The decent lesson to Malta is that it is possible to let the democratic contrast work, rather than select a President through a blinkered government majority, as invariably happens through our Constitution.

That ought to be the stuff of a bipartisan amendment to our Constitution. Such a decency will never happen. Indecency common to both political sides will prevail.

In the United Kingdom there is an ongoing indecent spectacle of a Prime Minister beleaguered by his own side. Tony Blair is the same man who breathed justification into the term "New Labour". He won three elections on the trot. He has been at the ruling top for an unbroken 10 years.

It was a decade of economic, political and social progress. Ironically, Mr Blair owes much of his success to the way he modelled himself on Margaret Thatcher, the antithesis to most of what a decent Labour party should stand for. That was not what undermined him - he won his second and third general election on that basis. Mr Blair blighted himself by becoming a George Bush poodle. He joined the US President in going to war with the despicable Saddam Hussein's Iraq on false pretences, but still managed to win a third term.

The Blair-must-go campaign is not driven by democratic socialist horror at his Thatcherism and Bushism. Nor, in reality, because he and the fractious Labour Party he leads were knocked witless by that fraction of the electorate which bothered to turn out to vote in the recent local elections. The essential motor is the burning desire of Mr Blair's colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.

Brownites assert that, when their hero reluctantly agreed not to contest Mr Blair after the mentor of them both, Jim Smith, died out of season, Mr Blair had undertaken to make way for Mr Brown in a number of years that was not specified, but was not understood by them to run over 10 years. Apparent indecent overstaying of his welcome by Mr Blair parallels indecent haste to take over by Mr Brown.

In our fair land, the common indecency lies not so much in unbridled ambition as in the manner whereby leaders who lose elections stay on. And on.

Malta may be tiny, but when it comes to vulgar political indecency it can teach its much bigger siblings in the EU a thing or two.

Mightier pen

The pen will remain mightier than the cowardly arsonist attacks taking place in Malta, stepped up through the coldly planned and executed attempt to set fire to the Caruana Galizia residence, in Bidnija. Evil fascist attempts to terrorise media persons and others will fail so long as those committed to freedom and decency continue to demonstrate their conviction that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.