Roamer's column

... or defeat, gallop a posse led by the intrepid Marie Louis Coleiro (let's be gentlemen), and in alphabetical order, George Abela, Evarist Bartolo, Michael Falzon and Joseph Muscat.

Posse may be too 'western' a word, conjuring up climactic high noons, the sound of gunshot, the bodies of baddies and, alas, goodies, sprawled all over the dust-strewn street; more a grin-packed walkabout such as the one we witnessed last Thursday.

Anyway, there were Labour's heroes in their Sunday best, or nearly, attending a poorly attended May Day manifestation, presumably unnerved by the miserable attendance but smiling still. The smile's the thing.

Apart from these contenders for the leadership of the Labour Party, there are as many again contesting the deputy leadership (why does Labour find it necessary to have two posts for the next to the top rung of the ladder when one is more than enough?) Given this wide spread of applicants, the unfolding struggle for the mind and heart of the party is necessarily sapping everybody's energies, leaving very little creativity for the legislature that starts in eight days' time.

Everything seems to be on hold as the battle that is supposed to bring about a root and branch renewal of the party - and a return to electoral fortune - plays itself out against a background of machinations that seems, paradoxically, to be tearing it apart. The sooner the field thins out, the sooner will the healing begin. There is a great deal of curing to be done and little time for recuperation. Any attempt at trickery this time, insiders are saying, will destroy the party as surely as the party was traumatised nearly 60 years ago.

Talking about which, Dom Mintoff's surprise arrival at a George Abela meeting and his endorsement of the man for the leadership must have come as a surprise - at least I hope so - and a shock to Dr Abela. There are some allies he does not need and he should order a spoon the length of the earth's circumference if ever he decides to sup with the man, a decision I do not think he is likely to take. But when politics take on Alice in Wonderland dimensions there is no telling who will do what to whom, say what to whom, advise what to whom. Into the present brew of Labour's internal politics, anything the three witches conjured up is game, and then some.

The first indication of how the race will be run comes next Friday when an extraordinary general conference meets in session to decide whether the selection of the new party leader will include votes cast by paid-up members and delegates, rather than by the latter group alone. Dr Abela stands to win if the conference broadens the voting numbers - watch out for any hanky-panky.

Go for it, Austin

What the transport-among-other-things minister said the other day explains it, up to a point. 'It' is a reference to the testing of roadworks during their construction and after their completion. Dr Austin Gatt wants our roads to be of an international standard and so do we, so do we.

I do not know how often you look down when you are walking or, if you do, if you focus on, say, the surface of the road or the state of the pavement. Should you so employ your time, it is impossible that you do not notice just how primitive some of the work is; pavements with a tendency to grow grass or pot-holes, and curbs, once shaped in granite (where has all the granite gone?) now in concrete with dubious properties, have a disturbed look about them.

If it is road you are traversing, have you noticed how often it is the case that once the smoothness of the bitmac has worn off, the path you tread is made up of packed bits of rock waiting to be dislodged?

Now we know why this happens. The work carried out on construction is tested by somebody selected by the contractor who is building the blessed thing. Human nature being what it is, this lop-sided arrangement brings about the lop-sided results I have indicated. It makes no sense to have those who build, act as guardians over themselves. Dr Gatt has homed in on what his predecessor failed to see and directed the Transport Authority to make certain that be the roads arterial, main or secondary, they should be tested by experts, one hopes, who are independent of the contractor responsible for their construction or, as important, for their maintenance.

This means, I presume, that detailed contracts demanding the highest standards will be drawn up stipulating all manner of checks to ensure that roads and pavements inside local council areas and outside them are built to last; and, when it is time for them to be repaired or re-laid, both these activities should likewise come under the supervision of independent experts. Dr Gatt must know that in the long run, the expenditure on maintenance work exceeds the original capital costs and, therefore, that this cost needs to be feature in the budget.

Once he has embarked on the road to improvement, so to speak, Dr Gatt may wish to know that many minor road works in the Sliema area are being carried out as shabbily as they ever were. Perhaps he needs to address all 67 mayors to tell them what he expects from them for the money their councils receive from the central government, in other words from us, the taxpayers.

Strengthening marriage

The US Institute for Marriage and Public Policy (IMAPP) has just published Pope Benedict XV1 on Marriage: A Compendium. The Pope has spoken about marriage on more than a hundred occasions since his election to the papacy.

Our bishops and educators, the Cana movement, marriage counsellors, men and women in or outside the state of marriage, as well as those who regard themselves as responsible opinion-formers, may wish to get hold of a copy of this publication. Only good can come of it.

Nor have all those talks been mere declarations on marriage per se. As we have come to expect from this man of faith and intellect, he connects his vision of marriage with themes that encompass human rights, world peace and the conversation between faith and reason.

In the Weekly Update of UK Marriage News, the president of IMAPP was reported as saying that, "Over and over again (the Pope) has made it clear that the marriage and family debate is central - not peripheral - to understanding the human person, and defending our human dignity."

And, same source, when he received the credentials of the US ambassador to the Vatican, Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, the Pope expressed his appreciation for America's recognition of the importance of a dialogue of faith and faiths in the public square...

"I cannot fail to note with gratitude the importance which the US has attributed to inter-religious and intercultural dialogue as a positive force for peacemaking... The American people's historic appreciation of the role of religion in shaping public discourse and in shedding light on the inherent moral dimension of social issues (my emphasis) - a role at times contested in the name of a straitened understanding of political life and public discourse - is reflected in the efforts made by so many of your fellow-citizens and government leaders to ensure legal protection for God's gift of life from conception to natural death, and the safeguarding of the institution of marriage..."

There is also, he did not add, the enormous negative impact of marriage breakdowns on a country's social and financial structures. It translates, away from any moral implications and the hysterical anathema hurled at any mention of these by cock-eyed children of the post-Enlightenment, and notwith-standing the efforts to which the Pope referred, into a cost to the American taxpayer of something in the region of $112 billion.

This has led The Washington Times to argue, reasonably and understandably, that 'divorce and unwed childbearing are grave public concerns, and the nation would be wise, economically and socially, to invest in strategies that strengthen marriages and families before they break up'.

To that point I will return some other time. If there are those who are keen to harp on about the downside of marriage, we must be equally keen to bring out and emphasise the downside of divorce, which comes at such a financial, human and therefore social price. Needed more than ever is that investment in strategies that strengthen marriage and families before they break up.

Let me end on a lighter note. Strange but true, after all, this is the age of pre-galactic travel - a couple has booked in for a honeymoon in space for a mere £100,000-a-ticket for what will be a maiden flight, on Virgin Galactic, naturally. Together, I seem to have heard somewhere, everything is possible.