The politics of persuasion and other stories

I am at present deeply and pleasantly engrossed reading Guido de Marco's autobiography The Politics Of Persuasion. Prof. de Marco is as brilliant and as erudite a writer as he is an orator. Events that took place when I was still a child, like the failed attempt to integrate with Great Britain and the controversial road to Independence, are described with an endearing personal touch which makes what could have been an otherwise dry history come alive. This lively autobiography provides an interesting foil to Lino Spiteri's equally intriguing version of Maltese history, which was published some months ago.

There are many instances that I can recall wherein both gentlemen were perfectly in synch and that their ideas about politics were collectively aimed at alleviating the hardships caused by the great social divide that the newly-minted independent Maltese government was faced with in 1964. We have indeed come a long way since then. The failure to address this glaring problem in time by the inert Borg Olivier Administration brought the terrible backlash that we suffered during the 1970s and 1980s; times that all but ruined my youth with its regime of intimidation and violence, times when one's words were weighed and masticated 100 times before being uttered let alone written, times when we did not dare to speak about politics openly or on the phone for fear of it being tapped, times when most of the articles I write today would not have been able to be published for fear of violent reprisal, times when our weekend outings consisted of one political rally after the other.

Where does one stop? O tempora o mores; where have those wonderfully terrible times gone? Hopefully, as Alfred Sant says, in the trash cans of history where they will forever remain like genies in the lamp... unless someone decides to clean old lamps, that is.

Speaking of Dr Sant, may I take the opportunity of wishing the gentleman a speedy recovery. I will not join the speculative fray nor consider the prognostications of the chattering classes as yet before some official statement is made by Dr Sant himself. When a potential Prime Minister looks at his mortality in the face it is obvious that what was hitherto 80 per cent predictable will juxtapose into a rollercoaster of possibilities. The episode could pass come se niente fosse and, yet, it could jeopardise the interests of democracy if the votes are in any way influenced by what is, after all, the sorry plight of one in five of us. Maybe now the powers that be will be convinced that we have a grave problem on our hands; a cruel and tragic epidemic that is decimating us as, among other things, we breathe in the impurities called PM10s and eat contaminated vegetables that have been blasted with pesticides within an inch of their life.

Whatever Lino Farrugia says I will never be convinced that the chemicals that have slowly oozed out of the millions of lead pellets that over the past 300 years have missed their mark and are embedded in our soil are not deadly health hazards. Nor can I sympathise with his wailing about what he calls the brainwashing of schoolchildren by exposing them to the story of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. St Francis preaching to the birds, as depicted by Giotto in the basilica of Assisi, is an iconographic blueprint that is so strong in its appeal that it has influenced artists and writers for the past 500 years.

As for Josie Muscat's fulminations that encompass the granting of carte blanche to the hunting community even at the price of leaving the EU, this has convinced me what a poor and warped ideology the man must have to even contemplate such a step; irreconcilable with the creator of Eden Foundation.

The photographs of incidents last March, which appeared in The Times Picture Annual 2007, are a stark reminder of situations that could return us all to the Dark Ages again. Those Dark Ages, described so vividly by Prof. de Marco, that escalated to anarchy in the 1970s and 1980s. A shameful period in our collective history during which Prof. de Marco stresses how terrible it was to see Maltese turn against other Maltese "with such vehemence".

It was the death of Raymond Caruana that brought about a twinge of conscience in Dom Mintoff. It was in fact as an eminence grise that Mr Mintoff eventually succumbed to the politics of persuasion and changed the electoral laws that had produced such a travesty of democracy. That both Prof. de Marco and Mr Spiteri played a great part in bringing this vital change about cannot be doubted. The turnaround in 1987 led, with one short blip, to what we are today: A fully-fledged European nation that, since the achieving of Independence, has been slowly and inexorably consolidating its long-awaited sovereign status.

Had we not been a traditionally Catholic, civilised race led by a nucleus of politicians gleaned from a professional class that was formed unwittingly by the most exclusive oligarchy in the world, the Order and, subsequently, the most democratic country with the most undemocratic empire the world has ever seen, the British Empire, I shudder to think what may have become of us had the turnaround of 1987 not happened. Just look at other great imperial gems like India and Pakistan where dynasties of political families like the Bhuttos and the Gandhis have all but been wiped out.

I strongly feel that, had we not been redeemed by the skin of our teeth in 1987 and guided by a PM whose rallying cry was reconciliation first and foremost, we could easily have been destroyed democratically. Had the PN come to power after those harrowing 16 years with too many axes to grind and too many vendettas to play out, Malta would have been sucked into a swirling vortex of anarchy from which no deus ex macchina would have been able to extricate us.

Speaking about elections, 2008 is not a good year for them is it? The atrocities in Kenya, where the death toll has reached the 300 mark, and the murderous turmoil in Pakistan, where the election has now been postponed yet again, have created global tensions that, if not deflated in time, will become even more dangerous and detrimental to world peace. With Nicolas Sarkozy going his own sweet way, flirting with Libya and rubbing the EU's nose in the fact that France is always primus inter pares without which the entire EU edifice will collapse, I shudder to think what could happen if France exasperates the EU to the very limits of endurance.

It has been a long time indeed since the student riots of 1968 or anything like them have rocked Europe. In those days, as Prof. de Marco quotes Che Guevara stating, "revolution is the best education for honourable men". The type of unrest we have today is not fuelled by Che's "honourable" ideologies but by fundamentalist fanaticism that has transmogrified the three religions of the book into polarised monsters epitomised by the symbolic city of Jerusalem. So, as the world holds its breath to see what will become of Pakistan over the next couple of months, we in Malta will do likewise to see what sort of elections we will have and when. A week is indeed a very long time in politics and a week in hospital for a Leader of the Opposition even more so. It is just like living in a hiatus or a vacuum. The sooner we are out of it the better.

kzt@onvol.net