Roamer's column

If the Nationalist Party is organising tinda sessions, it cannot be for the fun of it, or even for the sake of the employment of those who put up marquees. And if billboards are erupting all over the place, can elections be far behind? As nobody would dream of holding these on the Ides of March, today would seem to provide the best penultimate 24 hours for the official opening of the election campaign, with, as foretold here back in October, March 8 as the Big Day.

For his part, Dr Gonzi has been maintaining a remarkable cool, much to the exasperation and verbal contortions of those who are claiming, somewhat wildly, that by failing to call an election today, the Prime Minister risks being seen as incapable of taking a major decision. Rum. They said the same last year when they decided that he should call a post-Budget election. Also rum. They failed to consider that by not taking the decision these prime ministers-in-waiting expected him to take two months ago, the man took one.

However, there has been abundant evidence that a number of politicians, modest about being caught with their pants down, have swung, suitably clothed, into election mode. I've received three phone calls these past 10 days, each asking whether I would be in when X and Y, never mind Z, visited the street where I live. Soon, postmen will sag beneath the weight of political literature.

Meanwhile we are learning that, pace Dr Sant, no consultation took place with the Malta Union of Teachers over the additional year Labour intends to lumber kiddies in the kindergarten-primary stage of their education. Meanwhile, he continues to insist that the Maltese lira should have been devalued by 15 per cent before we switched to the euro, which would have meant that prices on all imported goods would have risen by that percentage and one Maltese lira would have been worth 15 euros less in your pocket today. Did anyone say new beginning?

And as to the promise being made that a Labour government would lift half the surcharge off our back (somebody is saying the whole lot) pull the other one, but not too hard, please, and answer this: From where will such a government find the revenue to fill the hole this would create in our treasury? Place this nonsense next to the shadow finance minister's curious musings over the interest payable on the national debt, and the spectres being paraded before I.M.A. Floater are haunting ones indeed.

Be all this as it may, how did last Sunday's 'come-back' by Dr Sant get you, if at all? I experienced a bit of a let-down. Where was the mighty, Pentecostal wind of change we had been hearing about? Where the clarion call to 'stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage'? Oh, those attending the conference were smiling and hugging away, rising as one to cheer on their leader, but where was the beef to nourish voters whose surname is Floater?

Perhaps I missed it all, but then I was still recovering from Mr Zammit's histrionic performance three days earlier, especially the bit where he punched the air and screeched for Mater Dei to be theirs so that a Labour government would show us how to run a hospital. Thirty years ago, today's young generations will not remember, they showed us how not to run one with a perverse brilliance and we lost some of our finest doctors to the great abroad for a decade. It says much about the standard of the conference that Mr Zammit received an ovation second only to Dr Sant's.

This is bad news for the Nationalist party. What it needed was the opposite of all that, for its sinews to be stiffened, its blood to be summoned up. The battle it faces is a psychological one. Winning this will require it to convince I.M.A Floater that its 'vision platform' is achievable - and truly, logically, visionary because it proceeds smoothly and directly from the convictions that have been its signpost for the past 10 years.

Why the terminological inexactitude?

'When the court case is over, Malta will be fined hundreds of thousands of euros for infringing EU laws' - thus Arnold Cassola, who now has time on his hands. He has not been the only one to posit this statement of non-fact. It happens to be completely untrue and Dr Cassola should know this.

It now looks as if we have reached the stage where spring hunting will no longer be allowed in Malta. Most will say amen to that. During accession negotiations, the Government made a case for derogation under Article 9 of the Wild Birds Directive. The Commission confirmed at the time that derogation would be possible if the strict conditions set out in that directive were met. It has since concluded that the circumstances allowing such a derogation were no longer present in Malta's case and referred the case to the European Court of Justice.

Similar action was taken against Finland. The ECJ ruled against Finland. The Government noted the decision and the Commission's confirmation that the derogation formed part of Malta's accession negotiations. It has also agreed that the European Court is the best place for the whole matter to be decided once and for all.

Because this entire process falls under Article 226 of the EC Treaty, there is no question of any fine being imposed, not to the amount of hundreds of thousands of euros, not of one euro. What did Dr Cassola hope to gain by repeating the canard?

Whatever he meant, the hunters are mightily grieved by the turn of events and are repairing to the Courts, and if necessary, to the ECJ.

Sapienza? Ignoranza more like it

That, at least, is how the unreasonable attitude of a few professors and lecturers plus a few students - miniscule in number compared with a huge student and teaching population of more than 4,000 in Rome's La Sapienza University - came over when 67 lecturers signed a petition calling on the rector, Renato Guarini, to rescind the invitation he had extended many months ago to the Pope in his capacity as Bishop of Rome.

Guarini had already been the target of a 'ferocious attack' in an open letter to the rector written by an emeritus professor of physics, Marcello Cini, and published in the communist paper Il Manifesto. The Pope's right to speak, he argued rather desperately, would mean 'an incredible violation of the traditional autonomy of the University'. Prof. Cini also berated Pope Benedict's ongoing affirmation that faith and reason are compatible.

Coming from sources whose milieu is none other than a prestigious University where freedom of thought and speech are considered to be sacro- and secular-, sanct, this crude attempt to wrest from the Pope his right to teach, preach and proclaim his intellectual convictions was rich. The letter to the rector further promised 'extraordinary gestures' in which as many students as possible would agitate against the 'Pope's interference with Italian institutions'. A song once asked, "Where are the clowns?" Try La Sapienza.

There is no need to labour the point that the first casualty of this ludicrous tirade was the lamentable absence of rationality demonstrated by Cini's verbal thuggery. Pope Benedict continues to demonstrate over and over again the high regard in which he holds the intellectual quality of reason. This catechist par excellence never tires of extolling the validity of reason in man's search for truth - and faith. Nor has he shown at any stage of his papacy a reluctance to enter into any debate on the subject whenever and wherever it came up for discussion.

The Vatican decided to spare the rector of La Sapienza and, indeed the Pope, any embarrassment and called off the visit to the University. Instead, it made his speech public. I urge those who belong to the ever-ready-to-criticise-the-Pope brigade to read it. His address was read out on the day he would have been at La Sapienza had Cini and his gang not made such eminent fools of themselves.

The conclusion of Benedict's speech asked what the Pope had "to do or say in a university? He certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others, which can only be freely offered... Beyond his ministry as Pastor of the Church... it is his task to keep alive man's responsiveness to the truth. Similarly he must again and always invite reason to seek out truth and God, and on this path urge it to see the useful lights that emerged during the history of the Christian faith and perceive Jesus Christ as the light that illuminates history and helps find the way towards the future."

That same audience was to learn from his address that Pope Benedict praised the academic community for its high degree of scholarship and emphasised the importance of its "autonomy which, on the basis of its founding principles, has always been part of the nature the university, which must always be exclusively bound to the authority of the truth. In its freedom from political and ecclesiastical authorities, the university finds its special role, and in modern society as well, which needs institutions of this nature".

The mayor of Rome got it right in his address to the university. "Intolerance can never be allowed to remove someone's right to speak." Less still "if... it is Pope Benedict - a cultural, spiritual and moral reference point for millions."

How Cini and his silly men must have squirmed as the red herring of Galileo was shown to be what it was. But don't bet on it. That herring continued to be trailed in Malta long after it had been dismissed in Italy. Nor did I read, unless I had missed them, any contributions by those of our intellectuals or shallow commentators who are always ready to castigate the Church for its intolerance any similar chastisement of their comrades-in-science or disbelief.

Still, the jury was not long out before our intrepid Cini and his clique received their comeuppance. Riotously, the Italian public in general and most thinking people accused them of shameless intolerance and it seemed likely that an invitation to the Pope was being considered. La Sapienza is clearly in need of his wisdom and anyway, such an invitation would stop Pope Boniface revolving in his grave.

My last thoughts on the subject were to wonder why, in the secular world that sets such store by the right of every man and woman to speak out, it was one of the deepest intellects of our time that was refused this right; why, on the matter of faith and reason, so-called men of reason quake.