The eternal pregnancy

Before Parliament has met, before we have had a speech from the President outlining the government's legislative plan for the next five years, Malta woke up one morning to find that it had joined the Partnership for Peace. My guess is that most people don't know and more don't care.

Although the government has offered to debate the matter in Parliament, it seems clear that any such debate would be academic. The decision has already been made. Leaving aside the controversy on neutrality and the effects of this decision on our relations with third world countries, it is the method with which it was taken that should interest us. The government has stolen a march on the opposition on a matter that goes far beyond the life of any government.

It is the government, possessed of full legal authority, to commit the country to the obligations this partnership implies and it will bear sole responsibility for the consequences, good or bad. So will the next government, which can affect our second withdrawal with equal legitimacy. Is this the best way to go about it? What will third countries make of us if our foreign policy changes with every change in government? If most people in Malta are too busy with their own lives to bother about whether or not we have joined the PFP, what will the millions of people in our partner countries make of our foreign policy oscillations? What will they ever know of our domestic politics? Would it not have been a better idea to wait a little longer and have the opposition on board?

Who cares? Forty-eight point three four per cent of the voting population has given the government carte blanche and a good part of the rest is too busy licking its wounds to raise its voice. Add to that the insecurity of the government holding as close to absolute power as can be by the most slender of threads and its need to be assertive may explain the stolen march. From where I stand, the government seems to have pulled a fast one on the opposition but, in fact, it has also made yet another retreat on political development. We have not yet come to the point where we see the value of consensus nor the need to set our foreign policy on a sound common base.

Nor anything else for that matter. For the next five years, the government will win every vote taken in Parliament. With a one-seat majority, backbenchers will be held under an iron hand. Except for the ritual of having elections every five years, what exactly do we need a Parliament for?

Why don't we just elect a government? In fact, why don't we just elect a Prime Minister and let him have a free hand in choosing nine good men and women to run the show? It would be a lot cheaper.

It may even sound seductive to the vast majority to propose electing a Prime Minister for life. Nearly half the population would be quite happy to have a Blue one and nearly half would love to have a Red one. Almost nobody at all seems to find any of this weird, antiquated, dangerous, or even shameful.

My mental image of the Maltese political situation on learning of the election results was of two immense amniotic sacs each providing sustenance as well as mental and physical comfort to something over 140,000 people. In each, a very small number seemed to rebel and pushed against the vast elastic wall but never seriously considered making their escape; they simply did not vote. In fact, that self-imposed limitation to protest defines our realities.

All 280,000 plus MLPN voters have their universe explained within the confines of their red or blue sac. They are mirror images of one another but would be mortally offended to be told so.

They have no concept of what it would be like to be in the other sac and they want none. To be out of the sac altogether is simply inconceivable. Then the Council of Europe came up with the abortion issue. The complete taboo on decriminalisation in Malta made the government's reaction a foregone conclusion: Malta will ignore any resolution passed by the CoE. What else? The problem is that Malta and Andorra have been singled out not only for not allowing abortion but also for prohibiting it when it is necessary.

Malta's Criminal Code deals with abortion in a more draconian manner than the Catholic Church. It is technically a crime to administer drugs to a woman suffering from cancer or any other life-threatening illness if the treatment is a known abortifacient. It is technically a crime to carry out an abortion on a woman suffering an ectopic pregnancy which will certainly kill her if allowed to proceed. Because of the political taboo on the subject, the government's response to the CoE is fully justified in Malta while it mystifies everybody else.

In fact, the Maltese are not inhuman. Nobody here would insist that a mother-to-be refuses treatment to a life-threatening disease or surgery when her life is in danger. No such treatment or surgery is ever denied to those needing it. We simply ignore our own laws. Somebody once explained to me that a certificate is issued by somebody authorised somehow for the purpose and that covers the issue. In legal terms it is all garbage. No medical certificate can suspend the Criminal Code.

The most entertaining response was provided by Tonio Borg who claimed that it was a matter of self defence. I suppose the foetus was given the role of attempting murderer and the defence was tacitly raised in a virtual trial compressed into a medical certificate.

The fact of the matter is that our law was written when microbes and sterilisation were not yet discovered let alone the diagnostic tools to determine a patient's condition and the treatment required. For well over a century, no legislator has found the time to update the law and the medical fraternity has managed somehow. With the legalisation of abortion in many countries and, more recently, with the recent anti-abortion campaign in Malta, our legislators are in terror of being the ones to do what is clearly necessary.

It is a peculiarly Maltese situation: Nobody, but nobody at all wants women to die when they are ill simply because they also happen to be pregnant. There is no crisis or debate on the issue because we have found our way through the maze created by our arcane legislation simply by ignoring it. It is a practical solution. In legal terms, it makes nonsense of our whole legal system but that it not very important.

The status quo has been preserved; we are happy in our red and blue sacs, in blissful ignorance of the other universe, without the least inkling that there exists a world outside that observes us and wonders what we are all about.

One day we will be delivered. I have no idea what it will take and have very little hope to be around when the waters finally break. It should be a wonderful experience, the start of wondrous realisations, the beginning of a relationship with the rest of the world, perhaps even with the other side. We are not ready for it yet. We need a little more time, a few decades more.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com