Roamer’s column

Just over four months before the end of the Second World War, a defiant Hitler told one of his adjutants: “We’ll not capitulate. Never. We can go down. But we’ll take a worldwith us”.

Germany did capitulate. Germany did go down, to what would have been Hitler’s joy had he lived – had he not lamented that theGerman people had not deserved him. And though he did not take the world with him, it had cause to hold its breath all right.

There is one difference between Hitler and Gaddafi. Although both suffered from an insufferable narcissism and the creator of a Nazi Germany was indeed the embodiment of evil, a veritable secular Satan, he was never in hock to the near-comic luxuries to which the Gaddafi family were so moth-to-the-fire attracted; no 1940s equivalent of a Jacuzzi in his private aircraft. And where Hitler mobilised a nation from penury to power, Gaddafi sat on wealth (still there for the digging, more than a trillion dollars’ worth of black gold) and kept many of his countrymen in – penury.

Yet there is a frightful parallel being played out to our south today. In a message of defiance, Gaddafi declared: “We will not surrender... If they want a long battle, let it be long. If Libya burns, who can govern it? So let it burn.”

While he hides, an unlikelyScarlet Pimpernel – here, there, everywhere, it seems – Libya’s history marched on in Paris, where the National Transitional Council met as an equal with leaders of more than 60 nations to discuss Libya After-Gaddafi. What has happened so far is nothing short of remarkable as we approach the doorstep of what appears to be a new Libya; even if many are hedging their bets about Libya A.G.

It remains to be seen whether Gaddafi will choose Hitler’s way out of a life that had wrought so much destruction on his enemies, on his own, on Jewry; or whether he will scarper. For me, the most surprising development has been how the ‘rebels’, as they continue to be incorrectly referred to, managed that march on and through the capital with such panache.

Days before they had given more than a passing impression they were a rag-tag army. Not so incidentally, whatever happened to the dreaded Revolutionary Guard?

Our Commissioner in Brussels

I hardly thought John Dalli would spend precious holiday time in Gozo reacting to what I wrote last Sunday with quite such alacrity; but he did, even as he informed readers of The Times he did not usually react to “biased, controlled, agenda-driven commentators.”

My criticism of our Commissioner in Brussels, who had to eat humble pie after remarks he made in his first public reaction to the crisis in Libya, was aimed at the politically puerile assertion he made, while in Gozo, that Malta shouldnot “remain a spectator” in that unfolding drama.

This when it was obvious to everybody else that the government had been anything but a bystander. I gave solid examples to demonstrate Lawrence Gonzi’s impeccable handling of the situation and our active involvement in the tragedy to our south. At no stage did Dalli refer to these; instead he chose to indulge in a self-centred monologue and in snide remarks addressed at this columnist and GonziPN.

For the record, I do not recall our man in Brussels, in his previous incarnation as a finance minister frothing at the mouth about my agenda-driven pieces when I praised him, as indeed he deserved to be praised at the time, not once but many times for his command of the portfolio he had inherited from George Bonello Dupuis.

I do not recall this because Dalli did not so froth at the time; he positively glowed; criticism from apologists of ‘GonziPN’ – a label that has become part of the Labour Party’s anti-Gonzi vocabulary which he shamelessly adopted – is something else again. He revealed a snapshot of his immaturity.

A comment from the NTC’s Prime Minister: “It is really a great honour to come to this friendly ally to express thanks and gratitude (to) the Maltese government and people for all the support they provided to our people during the historic uprising.’ But then he’s “agenda-driven,” too, isn’t he?

If Dalli is seeking to bid for the leadership of the Nationalist party, the Commissioner will need to display unmuddied credentials, an aversion to infantilism, and a display of statesmanship that has so far eluded him. He may also try loyalty and humility.

Employment, stupid

Dom Mintoff, those over 50 will recall, came to power in 1971, hung on to it for 13, 14 years, then stepped down. In his stead he appointed an unelected Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici to the leadership of the party and the country to the chagrin of in-line senior ministers.

Mintoff was fond of saying, correctly, that employment was a measure of the health of a country, its temperature gauge. Malta was, so went his diagnostic conclusion, a sick patient in 1971. He promised to bring the patient’s temperature down to normal.

Over the next decade and a half the thermometer readings rose. By the time his party was ousted in 1987, unemployment had reached disturbing double-digit figures and was higher than it had been in 1971.

On the eve of the 1987 election, Mifsud Bonnici hit on a bizarre remedy, employed 8,000 of the unemployed and slotted them into the public sector and parastatal companies. The end result was a swollen public sector, which Mintoff had promised to pare down, and millions of euros of taxpayer money to foot the bill. Parastatal companies went into terminal decline.

Successive Nationalist governments led by Eddie Fenech Adami, tackled this manpower drain onrevenue.

In recent years, confronted with a global financial and economic crisis that did for jobs around the world, Lawrence Gonzi’s visionless leadership succeeded when governments in Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, to name but four, mismanaged their finances so magnificently they are currently on a lifeline that threatens to snuff out the euro; or so Cassandras predict. Now Cyprus awaits a bail-out and same Cassandras the arrival of the bailiff.

Where elsewhere unemployment soared, Malta’s employment figures rose as a direct consequence of policies that attracted ever more foreign direct investment into the country. Employment does not grow on trees; it breeds on local investment, even more on foreign direct investment (FDI) which, in turn, flourishes when investors recognise the worth of a country’s potential, which in turn depends on responsible leadership.

By the end of last year, according to figures published by the National Statistics Office, FDI soared to a shade under €12.4 billion – €8.4 billion from EU countries, the rest from non-EU members, the Americas, Asian countries and Australia.

The investment came because nerveless, incompetent, Nationalist administrations had the nerve and the competence to resurrect Malta from the doldrums into which ithad descended under a previous socialist regime.

A summer like no other?

Well, not quite; that would be pushing it. God knows there have been far worse summers. Seasons we associate with sea and relaxation should not allow us to forget so many other sun-drenched, war-drenched months during the 20th century; or acts of genocide; or civil wars that ruined lives andcreated so much... but you getmy drift.

Summer 2011 has found the world rocking a battle-bruised baby it christened Arab Spring, which has sprung several leaks. We have Bashar al-Assad and Gaddafi refusing to recognise the signs of the times and the nighness of their end; an unsettled Egypt; and an anti-Israeli group in Britain booing the Israel Philharmonic inharmoniously at the Albert Hall.

We also have an American President whose numbers at the polls are registering embarrassing lows even with the Black-Hispanic vote; Hillary Clinton courted by Democrats to stand against Obama, an idea she has ruled out – but if she sees the President’s efforts to win re-election imploding, that would be another matter; Arsenal losing 8-2 to Manchester United; and paedophiliacs being “unfairly stigmatised”.

This summer, a group calling itself by the illiterate acronym B4U-ACT sponsored a conference in Baltimore. Pro-paedophile activists and mental health professionals looked into the possibility of “minor-attracted persons” helping with the revision of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) classification of paedophilia.

Speakers addressed an audience of around 50 on dizzy notions that paedophiles are “unfairly stigmatised” by society, that “children are not inherently unable to consent to sex” with an adult. They criticised the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for ignoring the fact that paedophiles “have feelings of love and romance for children” notdissimilar to those felt by heterosexuals and homosexuals.

Easy to dismiss attempts to redefine sexual norms, but experience has taught us that audiences of50 have the potential to growgeometrically.

Once they reach a figure that has politicians looking to their horses and The New York Times adopting their cause, liberals will jump on to the bandwagon for fear of being dubbed dyed-in-the-wool tabooists.

We have been here before. A year ago, Peter Tatchell, who once famously kicked off a programme on Channel 4 with the statement, “I have an issue with the Pope”, told The Daily Mail: “Several of my friends – gay, straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused.” A few more years and the outrage expressed against clerical sex abuse will change into open-minded acceptance, today’s crime tomorrow’s right; perhaps even a human right.