Roamer's column

Even outside the precincts of a secular court, the oath takes on a significance that is religious in origin. It has been called "an ancient ruin still standing". In Scott Hahn's Swear to God, the author cites Jospeh Vining, whom he refers to as "a renowned legal scholar". Vining makes the point that parallels between the practice of law and the practice of religion "are too striking for the lawyer not to see". Judges wear special vestments, the courtroom is designed to "to produced respect, even awe", the law is cited, like Scripture, as an authoritative text, and ritual is paramount.

It is by virtue of the oath of office ("I swear") that the President of a country becomes a President, a Prime Minister, Prime Minister, a Judge becomes a Judge, that most fearsome of offices, which demands of the appointee that he uphold the rule of law, free from pressure, without fear or favour.

When we talk about pressure, we normally take this to mean pressure from the State in all its forms, for it is the State that has the most power, should it wish to exercise this perversely, to intimidate the rule and exercise of law. A judge, or a magistrate, upholds the law. The law protects us. A judge protects us. The syllogism is clear. A judge is there to protect the citizen from any wrong done to him by another, or by the State in any of its roles.

A judge acts within the law because he can never be, can never think of being, without making a mockery of the law, above it. Should he make a mockery of it he places himself in the position of a common criminal. From such, society has to be defended and was so defended last week when former Judge Patrick Vella was placed in the dock for breaking the law he had solemnly sworn to uphold.

Society was stunned when the news broke out, a little more than four years ago, that a former judge and a former Chief Justice were to be arraigned in court charged with accepting bribes (Lm10,000 in the case of Dr Vella; Dr Arrigo is being tried separately next month) trading in influence and revealing official secrets in connection with a judgement handed down by the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Dr Vella apologised to society and admitted without reservation to the accusation that he was bribed to reduce a 16-year jail term. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. A man who had been appointed to protect the community from wrongdoers ended up a wrongdoer. A former judge who had been given the privilege of protecting society had harmed it and, by virtue of the office he held, harmed it horrendously.

There is no reason for gloating, nor is journalistic relish and crowing in order. The fracture of which Dr Vella has been found guilty is too serious a break for anything other than a sense of satisfaction that justice has been done. The term of imprisonment, circumscribed in its limitation by legislation - and that woeful limitation recognised, hence a change in the punishment governing similar acts in the future - must strike most of us as improbable.

Still, Dr Vella has paid a daunting human price in emotional and psychological pain beyond the judicial punishment he received. That pain lies in the cruel knowledge that at some moment in his life he, who was what he was because he had earned the privilege and taken on the heavy responsibility of deciding on innocence, had bartered his own innocence. The next moment he became a criminal; to his credit a sorrowful and apologetic one. But one cannot help asking, what would have happened to society had he not been found out? This is the crux of the matter.

Well?

It would take a dull commentator to deny Labour's victory at last weekend's local elections, or for that matter, to sneer at it. It would take a lacklustre member of the same breed to assume from that success, triumph for the party at the next general election. And only an obtuse observer could possibly remark that the Nationalist Party has nothing to worry about.

I can give a dozen reasons, and will do so in the fullness of time, why I think the Nationalist Party should be re-elected. I list four below. I can think of a dozen arguments as to why the Labour Party should remain in Opposition and I do not go along with the highly dubious one occasionally put forward by self-styled sophisticates, that a change of government is necessarily a good thing in itself. And it baffles me completely that there are those who think that the appearance of a third party in parliament will throw up some deus ex machina and somehow transform Maltese politics. We've been there.

So, in a way, the prime minister did the right thing in the wake of that result to acknowledge it, first, and to get back to the strategy of government. Here, at the macro level, matters are proceeding well, some are inclined to say very well.

The momentum to bring about the change-over to the euro is proceeding apace. This never meant a mere mechanical switch from one currency to another. It demanded from the country an economic performance sound enough to satisfy the fundamental criteria set by the European Commission. The readings are that as a result of responsible management we are meeting those benchmarks.

The tourism sector is, at last, showing signs of emerging from what appeared to be a bout of arteriosclerosis last year. It drives me catatonic, as it must you, to repeat that the sector is not the responsibility of one sector, the public or the private, but of both in their widest representation. It should not be too much to ask both and all to extract digits across the entire spectrum of activity that makes Malta a tourist destination. Our two Waterfronts give some indication of what we can achieve and have achieved.

Our site management, or the lack of it, is at last receiving formal attention in the shape of rules to govern the shambles that construction sites so often are. These rules should be reflected in a solution to the problem of road management when arterial, main, secondary roads are under construction or reconstruction.

And back to the good stuff - we are slowly and surely developing a calendar of events, a vast range of music events, theatre, opera, song, festivals of many hues that will win us visitors if we would only bother to let them know about what is laid on for them before they take the decision to go on holiday.

The approach of the opening date for Mater Dei Hospital - we need not worry unduly whether this will open on an arbitrary date taken a year or two ago. Instead we should concentrate on having it working on all medical cylinders, doctors, nurses, staff, equipment, administration, communications, safety, excellence (in practice not in words) so that when the move is made, patients will be able to tell the difference. Nurses and staff must surely be weaned from their habit of speaking as though they were on Xarabank.

And of course there is SmartCity under starter's orders and the only question is whether the Opposition will join the government at the start line. There, according to a report in yesterday's newspapers, the first multinational company is already "on (its) marks."

Ah, him again

I have come to the conclusion that for all the letters after his name, Dr Mario Spiteri is really quite childish and immature. Read him again, if you can.

Contrary to his assertion that it is, sexual health is not my pet subject by a long chalk but we know it is Spiteri's bread and butter. It was he who conjured up sexual health promotion from some battered hat in reaction to a piece I wrote, tongue in cheek, describing our family's eating habits 50-odd years ago. The dear boy made it amply clear that he could not recognise tongue-in-cheek writing if it were an elephant sitting next to him.

Sex, healthy or unhealthy, pleasurable or indifferent, licit or illicit, manifestly did not feature at all in my Gotcha! piece, demonstrating, if demonstration were necessary, that sex is clearly in the mind of the beholder. If it makes him happy let him think he has yet again rubbed my nose in it.

I would rather my nose in that than in his negative, muddy attitude to the promotion of sexual integrity, to which, contrary to the lettered doctor's unlettered remarks, I never laid claim. Listen to the man. "In today's world in relation to sexual behaviour of the young and not so young any more, who insist on taking risks with multiple partners or causal encounters when engaging in unprotected sex, the condom is the only solution and it would be grossly irresponsible if not downright criminal of any health promoter worth his/her salt to claim otherwise."

Yeah, yeah. And when a condom is not around (didn't re-stock, honey, I thought you'd have one) and sexual happiness depends on safety not on love and respect but you don't care man because you are feeling horny and you cannot help yourself and you have not once been asked to control yourself but told be safe and protect but I can't this time for your reward is very great on earth... They dig abortion in Europe, don't they? They do, indeed, so hold it, right there.

Some of you may have read that Daniel Ortega, the darling of the left in the late Eighties, has been returned to power in Nicaragua. I understand that one of his first acts in office was to prohibit abortion altogether. Brussels went berserk. It also turned nasty. Its man in Managua was quoted as saying, "Access to abortion is linked to aid programmes against poverty and to the rights of women. We hope that the new government will be capable of opening the debate and discussing it outside the passion of the electoral season".

The German development minister (Germany holds the EU presidency) made it clear that "there will be consequences if the law is not amended" (never mind that the Bill went through the Nicaraguan parliament with an overwhelming majority). Not to put too fine a point on it, this is economic blackmail. The point is that in Europe abortion has become another form of contraception. One day, Dr Spiteri will discover who the real criminals are in this age of sexual enlightenment and orgasms without end amen; those who counsel sexual integrity or those who give it a miss and ask us to recognise the sign of the times, to become civilised.

The Nicaraguan episode is a serious one. It looks as if I was prophetic a few Sundays ago when I asked whether the argument being made in favour of divorce to bring us up to date with European countries would not be also be posited on the issue of abortion. The situation, see above, seems to be worse than even I thought at the time. For if Brussels thinks it can lord it over a non-EU country on the matter of abortion, what pressure will it not apply on a member of the EU? And will there not be those among us who will berate Malta, when that day dawns, for adopting a peripheral stance on a matter where progressive EU countries exhibit a sanguine attitude to the murder of the unborn child? The reaction of Brussels to Nicaragua has provided us with a wake up call.

But let me return to Spiteri. Once Dominion had no effect on him, I'll try C.S. Lewis on him. Mr Lewis once observed in an article, "We have no 'Right to Happiness'," that, 'When I was a youngster, all progressive people were saying, "Why all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our impulses."

"I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilised people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct of self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you are a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is four bare legs in bed. It is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong - unless you steal nectarines."

Some look to an ideal - and fail, but the ideal remains for all that. Others place a condom around failure because the alternative is too droll and an ideal - hey, what's that? And if you wish to know how far the condom mentality has travelled, take a look at the abortion figures around the world. "What is done easily" someone wrote recently on the subject, "is done frequently". And if that's OK by Europe and elsewhere, then that's all right. Right?

And to think this all started with a remark about my father placing a leg of pork on our Sunday mqarrun fil-forn.

Quote...

(A strange sonnet, To a Fish, by Leigh Hunt, cited in The Illustrated Christmas Cracker, John Julius Norwich and Quentin Blake).

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,

Dreary-mouthed. Gaping wretches of the sea,

Gulping salt water everlastingly,

Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,

And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;

And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be -

Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,

Legless, unloving, infamously chaste: -

O scaly, slippery, wet, staring wights,

What is't ye do? What life is led? Eh, dull goggles?

How do ye vary your vile days and nights?

How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles

In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes and bites,

And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?