Language is essential to help us communicate with each other, whether of the oral or other types, such as sign or body language. It can be misused in all its forms. When that happens, we do a disservice to ourselves first and foremost. If it happens when one is in a public position it turns into a disservice to the whole community.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has been expressing alarm, both publicly and privately, at the tone which our political dialogue has been taking. He made an appeal to all those involved in politics to temper the way they expressed disagreement with each other; to disagree, yes, but to use moderate and temperate language in doing so.

Ironically, his appeal was proved right in a matter of hours, almost. There was a letter in The Times which caused the Prime Minister both to speak out against it and to write a letter to the editor denouncing it. It concerned the debate on divorce legislation. The letter writer expressed a veiled threat of violence at Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, the Nationalist MP who, to use the Archbishop’s expression, came out with a bolt from the blue by proposing a draft divorce bill.

The MP’s action served to intensify a debate which had started, really, because opposition leader Joseph Muscat had long ago expressed himself in favour of divorce legislation and committed himself to introducing a private member’s bill proposing it should he become Prime Minister. That a Nationalist MP jumped the gun with a proposal made without consulting his party angered many on his own side, though none used fiery language against him, at least not in public.

The Prime Minister expressed himself as stoutly as he could against any divorce measure, but undertook to have the issue debated in his party. True to his word, even if elicited from him by the fact that he has a parliamentary majority of only one which he has been forced to massage in more than one case, Gonzi started the discussion-ball rolling. There might even be a referendum on the issue before the life of the current legislature is out.

The debate also flared up in the newspapers. Various contributors from many walks of life pointed out that the PN has no mandate for the government to introduce divorce, not having included it in its electoral programme, detailed though it had been. Some contributors pointed a finger specifically at Pullicino Orlando to remind him of that fact. It had been a correct if at times bigoted discussion, until the letter with thinly disguised innuendos regarding adultery and an even less disguised threat of acute violence was published.

The Prime Minister, while reiterating his opposition to divorce legislation, condemned the threats in the letter. Bully for him, though it was swiftly pointed out to him that there were those who had written in vile personal terms about Muscat and other members if the opposition, without anyone in the Nationalist Party dissociating themselves from them or their lurid language. The irony in the letter to The Times was that it had been written by someone who was clearly a partisan Nationalist.

One can assume it was not the Labour side that had influenced him in making so bold as to come out with his cruelly loaded letter. The matter has fizzled out, so far, at least, with The Times editor dissociating himself from the letter, though that was technically unnecessary, and apologising for any offence given.

Printing ink barely dry, Muscat threw egg at his own face. In a debate with Lawrence Gonzi on Xarabank, a TVM programme, he got het up and more than once called the Prime Minister a liar. That was a bad mistake which I doubt the opposition leader will ever make again. Bad in being unbecoming, and bad politically. Not because it will encourage anyone to act violently. But because such things are not done. Anywhere, let alone at the highest level of political debate.

I learned at the start of my journalistic career in the distant past that to call somebody a liar makes one subject to legal sanction. A Labour newspaper I part-timed for carried an editorial against the Strickland newspaper Il-Berqa, calling it a manufacturer of lies (Il-Berqa fabbrika tal-gideb). The newspaper sued. The presiding magistrate found for it. He said that to say that one has lied is one thing, since it can be proven or otherwise. To say that one was a liar was actionable.

I do not think Gonzi will be taking legal action against Muscat. He will let him stew in his personal and political mistake, while Nationalist spinners will make hay out of it, forgetting that, barely hours later, a minister proceeded to describe a Labour shadow spokesman as a liar. But the point goes beyond those politicians.

It relates to what people expect from all who participate in political debate. They expect heated oral and written debate, certainly – democracy demands the clash and contrast of opposing ideas. Without that, political life would be not only dull, but also lacking in democratic terms. Yet they expect all those involved to act civilly. Attack ideas, but not those who hold them. The song, not the singer. Labourites have suffered enough personal attacks through the years, in life and in death too, to know the difference.

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